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what an excellent experience. it wasn’t so much the match itself as much as the atmosphere. a big change to see a match in such a huge stadium (70,000) to crave cottage (20,000). it also underlined the difference between english and scottish fans. clearly, there’s no sitting down in scottish football. the celtic fans stood and cheered in alcohol fueld madness the entire match. while i’m sure they existed, the number of celtic fans not drunk had to be about 10% or less. clearly, they can put away a few pints.

my seat was next to a woman who looked like a grandmother. she was with another woman and a man of similar age. they are apparently season ticket holders in the section where all the celtic fans were. it was kind of funny (at least to me) to hear here calling ronaldo “ronnie”. “come on ronnie!”. i get a sense that the english may look down on the scottish. maybe it’s not general and just related to their behaviour at football matches. you know, with all the standing and cheering and all.
the football was decent. giuseppe rossi looks to have some good skill. it’s unfortunate he doesn’t want to play for the u.s. van nistelrooy was obviously not there. keane played the first half for celtic and the second with manchester. i would say it’s definitely the last time you’ll ever see a midfield with keane, scholes and giggs. ferguson has got to be a bit disappointed. of course, keane is 34 and his career is likely over.

i suppose i might as well move on to the pictures.

i’m sure in his day, sir matt busby was dreaming of the day he could have his statue above the entrance to the manchester united megastore. a gateway to learning the true meaning of football. of course, there was a good number of people selling scarves, shirts, pins and other keane related items outside the stadium and up the street.

there were a few people at the match.

they do have a mascot, the red devil. however, no dance team was to be seen.

here’s keane on his final post game lap to salute the fans. it’s unfortunate that this camera only has a 3x zoom. well, and that might seat sucked.

overall it was good. any negatives revolved around the trip and not the match itself. i took the train up for p23. it would have been as low as p12 if i had actually gotten a ticket earlier. i do have to give manchester (the city) credit for at least having a tram that can take you from the train station to the stadium. well, at least close to the stadium. probably about a 4 block walk. the only real downside came after the match. i knew going up that the late night 23:30 (or something) train to london was p101.50 and 7:15 long. that was a non-option. the bus, which surprisingly was an hour faster was only p21. of course, didn’t book it in advance and it turned out there were none available until 7:00 the next morning. not good. so after several walks back and forth between the train station and the coach station, i opted to wait it out for the early morning train. luckily, there was no one to argue with about the decision so the process went smoothly. the earliest train was 5:20, but was also p101. i opted to wait until the non-peak time train at 9:15 (could have gone at 8:45, but i didn’t know it was a non-peak until too late). that still cost me p56, but the last couple of hours weren’t really going to be a problem. i could have gotten a ticket for much less in advance if i had already decided to wait until the next morning to leave. there was probably about 30 or 40 people (mostly celtic fans) also waiting it out.

luckily, i had stopped at the w.h. smith book shop at london euston station before getting on the train up. they always get me with the second book half price deal on the best sellers. this time around, i got “yes man” by danny wallace and “a long way down” by nick hornby. i read “yes man” most of the way through the night. it’s that good. about 5 or so i decided to venture out, maybe get something to eat. i went in this grimey 24 hour waffle house like place. the guy working in there was some sort of breakfast nazi. i’m standing there a couple of seconds having just walked in and he starts this “what do you want? if you don’t know what you want i’m not going to serve you.” in a fast, abrasive tone. i say, “umm”, seeing as i’ve looked at the menu all of 10 seconds. “i can’t serve you” and turns around and starts cooking bacon or something. i walk. i don’t need that shit. especially after being up all night. i probably would have gotten food poisoning anyway. we’ll just assume yes.

so, have you ever seen manchester at 5:00?

now you have.

manchester seems ok. a weird mixture of run-down old buildings and new ones. in the, assuming relatively small, are i walked around i would say more run-down than new. there does seem to be a good bit of in-progress construction though. based on my limited visit, i don’t want to live there.

i eventually made it home at around 12:00 on the 10th. long night. i had forgotten how much i enjoy staying up all night. it definitely gives you a somewhat drug induced feeling. of course, the best part has to be how well you sleep when you finally crash. i’m going to have to start staying up all night more often. not out partying, just up.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 16:43 and is filed under eurotrip-2006, football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.