Goal!!!

If anyone followed my twitter feed, which can be found on the right hand side, you would know where I was today.

Today, I was able to experience my first (real) professional soccer(football) game. AS Roma vs. Siena, at the Rome Olympic Stadium. It was truly an experience.

We’ve been trying to go to a game since we got here, but getting your hands on tickets isn’t always the easiest. To get tickets you can go to certain AS Roma official stores, and buy them there. You have to bring some sort of ID with you, and your name gets put on the ticket to be verified at the gate when you enter. Some games though, the more popular ones, are for Lazio (the region Rome is in) residents only. So for the first two games we tried to buy tickets for, this was the case.

There must be a big difference in the attendance of those games versus the ones open to anyone, because the stadium, which holds about 80,000 fans, was only about half full today. When I say half full I don’t mean that there are people spread out all over the stadium. Fans are mostly packed into the two end zones, which also happen to be where the cheapest tickets are (only 15 euro for our tickets). We were in the north end zone, which is the quieter of the two, though there was nothing quiet about it. We had great seats though, 11 rows up right behind the goal. Normally people like to watch a soccer game from the side, because you get a better view and can tell depth of field. Seeing that I spent most of my soccer career standing in the 18 yard box as a goal keeper, I’ve developed a good eye for the action going on down field, so our seats didn’t bother me at all, and in fact brought back memories of playing the sport I love.

If when you think of European soccer, you think of crazy fans, you would be absolutely correct. From the minute we came near the stadium until the second we got on the bus to go home, the fans were cheering, whistling, chanting and making all sorts of other noises.

At the beginning of the game, as the AS Roma roster was announced, they all broke out in song, singing what seems to be Rome’s anthem. After this they began to yell and taunt the small group of Siena fans in the section next to us. There were maybe 50 Siena fans at the game. They were surrounded by 20 police officers. As if that wasn’t enough, in-between the sections was a glass partition, complete with heavy-duty dead bolted door between the two sections. It was much like a hockey rink, except instead of keeping fans and players separated, it was keeping fans and fans separated. In the opposite end zone, about a dozen large flags were waved the entire game. There were also flares set off and all sorts of noisemakers. Our end zone had plenty of flags waving as well.

The game was tied at 1 to 1 until the 87th minute when an AS Roma substitute put in the second goal. The fans went crazy. I’ve never seen so much hugging, jumping, cheering and celebrating for a regular season game. It’s as if they had won the world cup. It was an impressive goal, and coming so late in the game was pretty awesome to see, but you could see in the fans a true passion and love for their team and for the sport. When the game ended, they all sang another Rome tribute song, and we were off to find our bus back to the hotel.

I’m ready to go back to my next game. I’ve already got my AS Roma hat and scarf, and hopefully the next game we go to will be a bit warmer, though the energy of the crowd today was enough to keep me warm for all 90 minutes.

Oh so you want to know about the level of play? It was fast, strong, skilled and really some of the most well executed soccer I’ve seen. It’s great to watch athletes who can perform at the highest level of competition. It makes soccer that much more enjoyable when a player can use his head(literally) and place the ball exactly where he wants it.