The Passion for European Football

Believe it or not, I have been sucked into the world of football while staying in London (that's soccer for the folks on the other side of the pond). I am a West Ham United fan and I could not imagine that football here has such an enormous impact on everyone's daily lives. Pretty much everyone has a passion for it and/or rugby. Somehow if I happen to go to a US soccer game, I would not find myself interested. What would you expect at a game between DC United and New England? When a team goes on the defense, US fans would just yell "Defense Defense." On the offense, we usually love chanting one word sentences.

Here in England, each football club has their own official song (i.e. from a soundtrack or locally created), chants and songs for the team of past victories, and songs that make fun of visiting teams that have lost to them. There are songs of their best players scoring a hat-trick against a local rival club, and parodies of other football club songs (just to piss them the away supporters off). At the top of that, there is the Premiership League, known as the "top flight" of english football (basically the elite league, Division 1). Then you got the Championship League (Division 2), and League 1 and 2 (Division 3 and 4 respectively). West Ham FC is in the top flight for this year, having gotten promoted at the end of last year.

Fans of both teams are not allowed to sit among each other. There is always an away section for them. At West Ham's Upton Park, it can seat about 33-34,000 people, but at most 3,000 of those seats will be set aside for the visiting team's supporters. Lines of stewards (aka security guards) separate the designated section from everyone else. I am sitting in the second section away from the visiting fans, and we just love throwing insult after insult, cat-calling, singing our songs and chants out, and they would do the same to us. Of course, a steward would usually come over to our section and tell us to keep it down, but what can you do if you are winning 4-0 and the game is almost over. Cursing out the other side's team and the referees for making stupid calls is basically the norm here. I doubt anyone can do that in an American stadium. You'll be more likely to be thrown out of the place.

But while living abroad, you hear about the best football teams in Europe and they play in the UEFA Champions League, which is pretty much the "World Series" for football itself. You get teams in England like Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester United battling it out with Spain's Barcelona and Real Madrid, to Portgual's FC Porto, to Italy's AC Milan, and to Germany's Bayern Munich. If you want to talk about football in any of these countries, you can get quite an earful on who is the best team out there on the pitch.

While in the states, there's everyone talking about Manchester United, but really, there's more to it than just them. I think for anyone coming back from Europe, we get an irrestible urge to make sure DirecTV has a package on European football games.

As a West Ham fan, it's going to be hard to miss the whole thing when I head back to the states. Also, don't think the movie "Green Street Hooligans" is the real thing over here. Truly, it's not. It can get crazy here, but the violence in the movie is no longer there. Yes, there is still a rivalry between West Ham and Millwall. I can tell you why there is one, but I will hold that out for later.

Cheers!