The Seattle Sounders Experience
August 11, 2010 at 5:06 am | Posted in Games In My Travels, General Football, Whitecaps Season 2010 | 7 CommentsI had the opportunity to visit Seattle this weekend and there just happened to be a game on last Sunday night: Seattle Sounders v Houston Dynamo. It was an opportunity to get a glimpse of life in the Major League Soccer as we await the entry of the Vancouver Whitecaps in 2011.
To put it all into context, I can remember some five years ago making my way to see the Whitecaps play the Sounders in the old United Soccer Leagues Division 1. The Sounders played in Quest field on that day, which can hold close to 70,000 fans, in front of what could only have been 2,000 fans at the most. There was very little atmosphere as the fans, for the most part, watched the game in a kind of bored silence.
At Sunday nights match the attendance was announced as 36,000. What an incredible difference! The Sounders have masterfully marketed their team and Seattle has embraced the Sounders with a passion and love which is truly remarkable. The Sounders fan group are clearly very well organized, making tremendous noise and conducting chants and songs which the whole ground participated in on the night. One has to remember there is a deep recession going on in the US right now, but the ground was packed.
The game is put on as a form of choreographed entertainment and the atmosphere was like a festival. It was a young well- heeled and apparently well educated crowd. We walked through Pioneer Square before the match and the fans were just gathering for the pre-match parade to Quest field.
While I cannot begin to say exactly what it is that has made Seattle Sounders such a huge success, it has something to do with the team’s intelligent and creative management and ownership, who have clearly engaged their supporters and made them feel a part of the team. They have done this through direct Democracy (I believe season ticket holders have a say through a vote with respect to team management), and through treating the fans with respect, unlike the ownership of the Seattle Supersonics who pulled the old “give me a new facility or I will leave” trick which is so shamefully practiced by many owners in American sports.
If the experience proved anything to those of us who have been going to little Swangard Stadium and supporting the 86er’s and the Whitecaps all of these years, it is that a Tsunami is about to wash us away! We will soon have a new regime which will overwhelm us.
As a long time supporter, I have already felt the alienation of this coming reality caused by the new uniform and logo fiasco. I believe the whitecaps should have consulted long time season ticket holders on this topic, and acted in the manner of the Seattle Sounders, employing direct democracy. Sadly we were overlooked by the new regime which has lost touch with us. I suppose we had better get used to it. I expect the Whitecaps to be a tremendous success in MLS, but if the team gets complacent on such issues and alienates fans further, they will not be the success the Seattle Sounders have been.
On a different note, I have to say the football itself was mediocre. The game suffered from being played on fieldturf, which is a very unforgiving surface. Many good footballing moments were lost and many plays were broken up by the high bounce the ball takes off of the surface.
Houston was a poor team, and both teams played a quite pedestrian style of football. The game was very competitive, fast and physical however. Sounders fans were sent home happy as they beat Houston 2-0. What was lacking in the match was a bit of tactical sophistication and fine footballing skill. Seattle do have some great talents in their squad, however, in particular Fredy Monteiro, Sanna Nyassi and Uruguayan World Cup squad member Alvaro Fernandez.
I was thrilled to see Fernandez play; he brought a footballing class to the game which was missing before he came on mid-way through the second half as a substitute. Fernandez coolly scored a goal on his home debut. I feel Sounders fans will get a lot of joy out of him.
As a whole, the experience was nothing short of incredible and demonstrates how far the MLS has come. Cynics who said the game of football would never catch on in the US and Canada must now surely eat their words and retreat in shame.
Football has truly arrived in the USA; Seattle is the place it is all happening.
Paris St Germain 0 Chelsea 3
March 31, 2009 at 4:45 am | Posted in Games In My Travels | Leave a commentYes, again in Paris… This time I took my wife on our trip to Europe in fall of 2004 (It was our honeymoon!!!). I had no idea there was going to be a Champions League game in Paris but I soon discovered this when we went to the PSG shop on the Champs Elysees. I was thrilled, a chance to see Mourinho’s Chelsea in their pomp. It was the opening round of the group phase of the Champs League.
We took the Metro to the closest stop to Parc Des Princes and walked with the crowd to the stadium. I must say there was a frightening mood in the crowd and I was very glad to get inside the stadium to the relative security of our seat. The stadium was packed and pumped to see Chelsea play. The PSG ultras put on a great show and made tremendous noise. I must say that I have become a fan of PSG having seen them play at home a number of times. Part of the reason the crowd was was pumped up was that Didier Drogba had just joined Chelsea in the off season. Drogba played for PSG’s most hated rival- Olympique Marseilles. PSG fans hate Drogba with a passion.
This game showed the vast difference between the French and English leagues. In spite of playing away from home in front of a hostile crowd, Chelsea dominated the match from the start and PSG did not stand a chance. PSG could hardly put more than two passes together before they lost possession. They rarely threatened Chelsea’s goal.
John Terry scored first in the first half off of a corner after the PSG keeper misjudged the cross.
Didier Drogba was the story of the match. He scored two goals and rubbed it in with the crowd who responded with ferocious boos and whistles. I am a great fan of his because he is a monster and every defender’s nightmare. He is strong, big and fearless. He is a great finisher. He has even mastered the art of diving…
Chelsea played with tremendous confidence, the kind of confidence Mourinho’s sides all play with. He is a master manager, and it was fantastic to see one of his teams play.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/match?id=161860&cc=5901
Torino 1 AC Milan 3
September 2, 2008 at 6:26 am | Posted in Games In My Travels | Leave a commentI travelled on an overnight train from Barcelona to Torino in September of 2000. I got off at the wrong stop at the smaller train station at about 5:30 AM and had to walk to the tourist kiosk to try to get a room for the next night. The kiosk didn’t open until 9 am so I had a sleep on a bench out front.
I was sent to a place near the big train station. It was not a particularly nice neighbourhood, but the room was clean and cheap. I had not eaten since the previous evening so I was famished and went out in search of food. I found a nice deli and ordered some absolutely gorgeous food and found a local newspaper. It was Saturday and I had thought that I was going to see a division 2 clash between Torino and Venizia the next day, but it tuned out that it was in fact a Coppa Italia match between Torino and…AC Milan!!! My heart leaped. I had not thought that I was going to see one of the biggest clubs in world football. I asked the proprietor of the deli to tell me where to get a ticket. Very kindly she walked me around to a place called “Solo Toro” a fan shop which sold Toro gear and souvenirs. It was run by a depressed looking couple who told me just to go to the stadium and buy a ticket there. I foolishly thought that a match with AC Milan would be sold out.
The Coppa Italia has the status of the League Cup in England. No one takes it that seriously and the big teams play their second teams in the early rounds and don’t take it seriously until they are in the quarters. Mind you, AC Milan, like all of the world’s big teams, has one hell of a second team. On the night Oliver Bierhoff started up front and World Cup starter for Brazil Leonardo also played.
Torino is one of World Football’s tragic clubs. It was the undisputed best team in all of Italy and won four or five Italian championships in the late 1940′s. In 1949, A plane carrying all but one of the Toro players crashed in the fog in a tragedy more nasty than Manchester United’s Munich disaster in 1958. Torino did not win another Italian championship until 1976, and have not won another since. They have had success in the Coppa Italia, but not on this night.
Toro used to play at their ground Filadelfia, but moved to the stadio Communale and then Stadio Dell Alpe which they shared with Juventus. It has to be one of the worst places to watch a football match. It has the deadly running track and then some separating the fans from the intensity of the action on the pitch. I could not believe how far away I was from the field of play. I soon realised how foolish I was in trying to buy a ticket earlier, because there were no more than 10, 000 in a stadium that can hold 70,000. The majority of the Fans were crowded behind one goal. AC Milan had some travelling support who were well organized and vocal.
A fellow called Guly scored two long range crackers for AC Milan either side of halftime. They were superb low shots which hit the corner of the net from 25 to 30 yards out. Bierhoff scored, but Toro pulled one back late through a little guy called Pinga. AC Milan put the match away with the latter Guly wonder strike strike at the end of the match.
It was an odd experience sitting in this vast stadium with so few people present after sitting with 90,000 or so for the Champions league match in Barcelona, and I am glad that Torino now play in the smaller Olympic Stadium instead of the Del Alpe (which Juventus are in the process of renovating to better suit footy viewing).
Toro are now back up in Serie A and I hope they manage to claw their way back up to the top end of the table. Go TORO!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_F.C.
http://www.archiviotoro.it/a/archivio/archivio/0001/c6.asp
Paris SG 1 Bastia 1: Ronaldinho
August 20, 2008 at 4:58 am | Posted in Games In My Travels | Leave a commentWhat was remarkable about this match was that I got to see Ronaldinho play for PSG. He pulled out many a trick from his bag, but not to any great effect. Bastia is just a little team from the island of Corsica, yet the sleeping giant PSG could not break them down. It was really a victory for the little band of traveling fans from Corsica, who celebrated with the Bastia coach after the match. Bastia went ahead through Lillian Laslandes, that great french striker I had seen a few years earlier for Bordeaux. He scored a true poacher’s goal in close.
PSG, coached by French world cup legend Luis Fernandes, eventually equalized after sustained pressure in the second half. The crowd was very frustrated up to that point, especially with PSG’s habit of playing the ball backwards rather than forwards.
Ronaldinho hit the bar early with a cheeky chip, but his influence waned as the match went on. He was a bit of a showboat, and Barcelona really harnessed his power in the next few years to make him fit within a team.
It was quite a good match with lots of close calls and a superb performance by Bastia’s goalkeeper. There was even a fracas at the end of the match as the players mouthed off at each other when they were leaving the pitch…
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