In the UK you\’d think twice about a day trip from Ayr to Manchester to watch United, assuming you could even get a ticket. But in the US, 5 hrs is considered not much more than a run to the corner store and so we piled in the car for the 10 hr round trip from West Lafayette to Ann Arbor Michigan to see Manchester United take on Real Madrid. It was 10 years since I\’d last seen United live and I was surprisingly excited by the prospect.
The main difference between a road trip in the UK and one in the US is that, here, the roads are very long, very straight and very empty. Which could have been a problem in itself.
Incredibly, a round trip of nearly 600 miles, and not one speeding ticket! It\’s not big and it\’s not clever, but I got 15 of them in my first 10 years in America and so Elaine was betting on at least one this trip. Cruise control is a Godsend and, for me, the day of the driverless car can\’t come soon enough. But the time passes quickly and the regular stops along the way remind us that we\’re passing through real America, not the version touted as reality on the TV and in the movies.
Ann Arbor, Michigan. An hour or so west of Detroit. Heartland, USA and home to Michigan University. The Wolverines. Why would Manchester United and Real Madrid come here to play a game of footie rather than one of the big metropolises? Well…Michigan Stadium, where the Wolverines (American) football team plays, holds 110,000 people and is the largest stadium in the US. Let me just emphasize this for the folks outside the USA – a UNIVERSITY sports program with a stadium for ONE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND people. And they fill it routinely. Americans accept this as normal, but I don\’t know of anything comparable anywhere in the world. Anyway: of course; the promoters of this game were going for the record. The biggest crowd ever at a footie game (still refuse to call it soccer in my blog) in the USA. And sure enough that was the headline after the game. A US record footie crowd: 109,318. Although I can\’t help noting, that\’s only half of the world record 220,000 that watched the 1954 Brazil:Uruguay World Cup final at the Maracana in Rio – man, I\’m still annoyed we couldn\’t get tickets to go there last month!
This was an unusual cross walk experience. The very nice police lady controlling the lights, (you can see her by the box at the telegraph pole if you look closely) was mic\’d up and entertaining the crowd with trivia and a running commentary on the team bus approach whilst the crowd waited to cross. Way to keep those unruly footie hooligans under control!
Surprisingly, despite it\’s capacity, the Big House, as Michigan Stadium is known, doesn\’t feel that big. Probably in part because, on a university campus surrounded by student apartments and residential homes, the approach feels less like a walk-up Wembly Way, more like a stroll through a suburban neighborhood. Except for the homeowners, eager to make an opportunistic buck flashing \”Park Here\” signs and cramming cars onto their otherwise neatly manicured lawns. But the pricing policy was interesting: A mile from the stadium the price was $5. Opposite the stadium. $60. So $55 to save walking a mile. Hmmmm? I won\’t say where we parked. Once inside you know it\’s a big crowd, but it still doesn\’t feel that big.
The stadium is mostly open, uncovered, no big structures enclosing you and so it\’s just spacious. Even afterwards, leaving the area wasn\’t that difficult with plenty of roads to distribute traffic onto the near bye freeways.
The game itself was a typical pre-season affair. If the teams were playing at 70% effort I\’d be surprised. But then, no one wants to get hurt before the season starts. Still, for the hardcore footie fan like me, it was interesting to see the teams prepare for the new year. Man United\’s pre match warm up was particularly intense.
Maybe I\’d just forgotten but if it\’s any indication, then I\’d say the new coach has brought a much different regime to the squad. I liked the look of United\’s new formation: three central defenders, two wing backs and a holding mid fielder allowing space for two creative midfielders and both Rooney and Van Persie up front. Particularly pleased to see a new lease of life for Young and for Fletcher, after his career threatening illness. Yes, this was just pre-season and no telling how the three young central defenders will hold up under real match pressure, but it certainly was good to watch.
For Real Madrid, Bale is every bit as good as his, what was it, $130M price tag. I hadn\’t realized just how tall and athletic he is. And pretty! But no matter how pretty Bale is, the biggest cheer of the day was when Ronaldo came off the bench. I\’d never heard 30,000 women swoon before? Hard to describe although I have to say it was more like that sound girls make when they see a cute puppy dog! He wasn\’t supposed to play today due to injury, but, to their credit, the organizers let him run out for 15 minutes. A far cry from the last time I saw United 10 years ago in pre-season when they were boo\’d off the field for playing their third team! In the end, United won 3:1. Who knows what, if anything, that tells us about the season to come.
And again, one half of the Old Firm showed up at a major footie event. Why Celtic, and where the hey are Rangers?
This lady was Canadian but her family was from Glasgow and she\’d lived there for 6 years. She had a bit of the Scottish accent but, by the time we\’d done chatting, hers had brought out the worst of mine!
A final thought. I figured out today what\’s still missing from American footie. On the one hand, 110,000, enthusiastic, fans showing up in the Heartland to watch United play Real Madrid is impressive. Bless: they know something big is going on. But (whispers): for a crowd that big, they were deathly quiet. I mean, yes, if a goal was scored or a near miss shot on goal, then they knew to cheer. But, in between times, it was so quiet you could hear the players talking to each other on the field. Fact of the matter, a few die hards aside (Messrs. Raisman, Warner etc) the American footie community hasn\’t the in depth knowledge required to really cus vociferously at a poor refereeing decision, or to boo derisively at the \’baddie\” on the other side and don\’t have the pack mentality required to spontaneously start a chant (\”I believe that we will win\” doesnt count). And OK, this was a pre-season friendly so passions weren\’t that high. But it occurred to me that, while footie is most definitely coming to the USA, they have a ways to go yet to really \”get it\”.
But I\’m being \”pickie\”. I was fortunate, yet again, to experience another great event in this wonderful summer of soccer (yes, yes, yes – I said I wouldn\’t use the word \”soccer\” in this blog but, well summer-of-soccer was, you know, more alliterative and so, I get to choose!).
Sadly, summer, at least for the footie world is nearly over, and the real season is just around the corner. After stumbling last year, United need to get back on top and on this showing, I\’m quite confident. Glory Glory Man United and the Reds go marching ON ON ON!
(p.s thanks again for all the kind remarks about the World Cup blog. But I\’ve since learned that a lot of folks only read the entries that were posted on Facebook. For fear of boring everyone with my World Cup blether, I only posted a few of the blog entries on Facebook. There was much more in the actual blog if you care to click into it and delve around)
What! Scotland Qualified!!! 