Tuesday, March 29, 2010 is a date I will always remember. I won’t remember it for the weather, my classes, or for the Singarama practice I missed—I’ll remember it for being the day that I attended my first international soccer match.
The United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) played Paraguay on Tuesday at LP Field, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket and go with seven of my good friends who love both soccer and America. We ordered our tickets on the pre-sale, so our seats were pretty good—12 rows up around midfield—and we had been looking forward to the match for months.
On game day, Trey Weatherly, Taylor Ezell, Casey Boyer, Drew Lewis, Alexander McMeen, Bryce Davidson, Garrett Crothers and I all met up outside of High Rise (wearing almost every scrap of USA apparel we owned) to head to McDougal’s for a little pre-game chicken. After filling up, we headed out to LP Field and joined the masses of red, white, and blue just before kickoff.
Before I even entered the stadium I knew that this sporting event would have a different atmosphere from the Braves and Titans games I was used to attending. Never have I seen so many crazy costumes for a professional sporting event. Normally, you would just see people wearing a team jersey, shirt or jacket. Here, there were shirts, jerseys, shorts, pants, flags, bandanas and scarves galore proudly displaying the red, white and blue.
Like I said before, our seats were fantastic. You could hear the players shouting and the ball hitting against them. It was incredible. The fans around us made the experience even better. One guy directly in front of us really made the experience memorable.
He was from New England and kept raving about how the fans here never really cheered, so we convinced him to lead us in some cheers and get the rest of our section to go along. The only chant he ever wanted to do was the tune of the White Stripes song “Seven Nation Army.” It was pretty great screaming our heads off with our new friend in front of us, even if we were the only eight people in the stadium doing it.
The only thing that I would change about the experience (besides the U.S. losing) would be to buy tickets next to the American Outlaws. That section of super-fans never stopped screaming and chanting for the whole 90 minutes. I feel like their energy would have made the experience even more memorable than our lackluster section did, despite our New England friend’s best efforts.
Overall, the fan experience was incredible. Even though it was cold, rainy and we lost, I got to enjoy a great game of a sport I love with a bunch of great people. My first experience with international soccer was everything I hoped it would be, and I know that the memories I made screaming the White Stripes with New England, looking on in disbelief at the unbelievably bad calls by the referee, or grabbing my buddies in nervous anticipation as we watched Michael Bradley’s incredible shot get punched wide of the goal will stay with me for years to come.