37

the only real positive to the match was the tremendous turnout of american fans. it’s unfortunate that the match turned out the way it did. the second goal knocked a bit of wind out of the fans’ sails, but it wasn’t probably until the last 20 minutes of the match when it had almost completely died. post half-time there really wasn’t much until eddie johnson came on.

i’m not going to ramble on about how crappy the u.s. played since plenty have already. for me, the only bright spots were gooch and eddie johnson. why was beasley not subbed? anyway, if eddie and dempsey aren’t starting against italy i will be very disappointed. the switch to the 3-5-2 didn’t really do it for me either. it was nice to see a tactical move towards a possibly more offensive format, but the problem was the formation. it was the execution or more specifically, the lack of any.

saturday against italy is a must when. a tie means we aren’t dead, but you might as well club us over the head and throw us on the cart.

it’s been a day since i initially wrote this. i couldn’t decide what pictures to post so i put it off. i just decided to go with these. there really weren’t any that were that great.

soccer head and his significant other were our fearless leaders from soccer travel after getting off the train in gelsenkirchen.

captain america, freaky elvis and some guy who may or may not be a porn star. it’s tough to tell with the mustache.

there were a few people wanting to take the tram to the stadium in gelsenkirchen. it turns out that taking the bus to the stadium is a better method since it’s direct to the stadium without making regular stops.

just after half-time.

on the train to gelsenkirchen, i sat next to andy mead from yellow card journalism. he had been hired by soccer travel to take pictures on the trip. supposedly, the plan is to maybe send out a cd or dvd with pictures after the trip. i’m sure he did a better job than i did. i should have gotten better pictures of all the u.s. fans in downtown (?) gelsenkirchen before the match.

for the second day matches, we went down to the fan fest in frankfurt to watch the matches. the fan fests are setup in at least every host city. i’m not sure if anything happened in other cities. generally, it’s very impressive. i have no idea how this compares to anything that occurred in 2002, but i would be surprised if it was to this level. it easily makes it worthwhile to come just to the fan fests without any match tickets as each has huge high definition, i assume, screens showing all the matches as well as other events and a lot of food and beer. think of it as a music festival with football instead of bands. i think there may be some bands or something later in the evening as i believe they supposedly keep going until 2 in the morning. maybe we’ll hang out longer tonight after the brazil match.

anyway, here’s some pictures from frankfurt.

general skyline. you can see the top of the screens in the middle of the river as well as the ferris wheel. i wonder how much the banners with ballack, kaka and messi cost?

sub-optimal viewing of england v paraguay was on the smaller screen since the 2 sides of the big screens in the river were full.

we did watch trinidad v sweden and argentina v ivory coast on the river screen. the side we were on had, i think, 4 sets of bleachers. you can also see the large number of people on the far bank watching the screen on the opposite side.

i’m not sure what the estimates are for the number of people at the fan fests, but it was a lot. cut off numbers for closing areas would also be good to know. the guy next to during argentina v ivory coast was from somewhere about 100km from frankfurt and had come specifically to the fan fest. i’m not sure i would say he was annoyed, but at least disappointed that someone coming from alabama was able to get tickets for 4 matches and he apparently was unable to get any. there seems to be general disappointment with germans who were not able to get tickets.

i guess it’s better late than never. we’ve been a bit busy the past couple of days watching games. we slept late saturday and got up just in time to go watch england v paraguay and then it’s been almost constant matches since then. luckily, we do have free wifi in the hotel.

anyway, enough of that, let’s move on to the stuff that really matters. just to recap, g’owen had signed up for the fifa conditional ticket program. we were allocated tickets for the opening match on the 7th. 2 short days before the match. g’owen wisely booked us a flight from frankfurt to munich (couldn’t get a train reservation not in person less than 7 days in advance and didn’t want to risk not getting a seat on the train) that left at 16:00. g’owen and better half were set to arrive in frankfurt on the 9th @ 10:25. i moved up my train to the 7:07 leaving amsterdam and arrived in frankfurt around 11:00. they arrived at the hotel in most likely record time since their driver was going approximately 260km/h at some points on the autobahn. they arrived safely, shaken, not stirred.

post meeting at the hotel is when the fortunate chain of events started falling into place. we left the hotel and caught the u-bahn (subway) from across the street to the frankfurt airport. this is where the one unlucky event occurred. apparently, germany thinks it’s a good idea to have a 1st and 2nd class section on the subway. the first class is probably less than 5% of the train and looks basically identically. there’s no distinguishing features except for a 1 on the outside of the door and a small 1 withing the area. no other words accompanying the numbers. we just got on at the door in front of us. the german subways appear to work on the honor system with no turnstile entry. they just check for tickets later. so, at the airport we’re about to get off when the subway ticket nazi’s (one of which looked like saddam hussein) asks for our tickets and, oddly, our passports. our tickets were from the hotel which gives us free 2nd class travel on all frankfurt public transport. there’s also an english guy sitting across from us in a similar situation. the point is, it’s not obvious that 1st class even exists for anyone who has used a subway anywhere else in the world and it’s a 40 euro on the spot fine. nice unwelcoming to frankfurt. clearly, this is some sort of racket to extort money from foreigners. subway saddam has been put on notice.

anyway, on to the brighter points. so 120 euro lighter, we eventually make our way to the ticket counter to check-in. we were able to get on the standby list for the earlier 15:20 flight, adding an extra 40 minutes to our arrival time. our best case estimate with the 16:00 flight (arrival scheduled for 16:55) was that we’d make it to the stadium at about kick-off. we were a bit wrong. we began making plans for the potential of less than all of us making it onto the early flight. g’owen at a minimum was going to have to go since he was the only one that could pickup the tickets. figuring that the line to pickup tickets would be long, this might save us some time. as the time approaches, everyone except me is already on the earlier flight and boarded. luckily, i got on as well. the plain lands and we start making way to the s-bahn (i’m guessing the above ground local trains? u-bahn is underground/subways). we make it and beginning trying to figure out what tickets we need. normally, your world cup ticket gives you free usage of local public transport in the host city, but we didn’t have our tickets yet. luckily, 2 helpful older german guys notice our ignorance and help us out. apparently, you can get a partner ticket for up to 5 people riding together that lasts for a day. so we make the train. after the lengthy 45 minutes out of the sticks where the airport is, we switch to the u-bahn for the approximately 15 minute ride back out into the sticks at the stadium. allianz arena is in the middle of nowhere. we get off the train and make way to the ticket pickup. no lines and no waiting, what luck. at this point we’re only a few minutes before kick-off. g’owen and wife decided to jog/run to the stadium, inconventiently no less than 500 meters from the ticket pickup, as the national anthems were playing. i decided to walk. i finally get up to the entrance, no lines, no waiting. a guy that got there just before me is having his passport checked to match with the ticket and seeming to be having some sort of problem. luckily, they just scanned my ticket and let me pass as i later found out that i had g’owen’s ticket. obviously, they hadn’t checked his either. if they had checked, i may have been screwed. i jog around to our section and get to my seat just a couple of minutes before kick-off. you might want to read back through that and observe how well everything fell into place. missing a train here or there or something and we wouldn’t have made it before kick-off. most specifically catching the just 40 minute earlier flight allowed us to see the first half.

after a nice first half of action, i decided to go grab a bratwurst. i can’t find the bratwurst concession stand so i’m walking around the outer part of the stadium and find a 50 euro bill folded up on the ground! things really just always have a way of working out for me. now i’m plus 10 euro for the day due to the unfortunate mishap with subway saddam.

post match, we make our way back to the train station, which already beginning to get packed, and get our german rail pass (for 7 travel days during a month) stamped and get a 3 euro per person reservation for the 23:15 train back to frankfurt. seemed wise as we had gotten out of the stadium fairly quickly and more and more people were coming in by the minute. we hang out and evenutally get back to frankfurt and our hotel by about 4:30. quite a long day of travel for everyone. mine was slightly lighter with only starting at about 5:30.

excellent experience. yes, a 2 hour match was worth every penny of the e300 ticket and e350 flight.

onto the pictures.

is that a big tire or a stadium?

just in time for the (sort of) moment of silence. is it really impossible for everyone in a stadium to keep their yapper shut for a minute?

a view to the right from our seats.

haha, we had better seats than claudia schiffer. well, i guess that depends on your preference.

who’s that lurking in the shadows?

a mass exodus.

i’m sure i could have added more, but this has already taken me an hour. i still need to post some stuff from the fan fest in frankfurt. huge outdoor world cup viewing and all around festival, food and lots of beer. i’ve so far had bratwurst, rindwurst and currywurst. i’m not sure how many ‘wursts there are, but i’m going to attempt to try them all.

tomorrow, it’s the first u.s. match. may not make it to post more until tuesday as our train won’t get back until around midnight.

i went to see “x-men…” today. gererally, i enjoyed it. i probably should have watched the last one again before going as i think i missed a few carry-overs. they weren’t too integral to the plot though so it’s no big deal. my one complaint would be a ridiculous use of mutant powers and computer fx for simple personel movement. a key observation from this is that mutant genes apparently do not affect intelligence in this world. also, a heavily prostheticized (word?) vinnie jones plays juggernaut. kelsey grammer plays beast (blue furry guy). it was bothering me through half the movie that i couldn’t put a name to his voice.

i bought “the other half” yesterday. coincidentally, vinnie jones is also in this one. i think he’s in pretty much in any football movie made in england. he seems to have the hard footballer type nailed. weird. the basic premise is this guy marries an american girl (there’s a nice exchange between them because her dad is a baseball fan) and then surprises here with a trip to portugal for their honeymoon…in 2004. for those that don’t know, this was during the european championships (kind of like the world cup for just europe). i thought it was really good. it was independent and shot on mini-dv. the kind of independent movie that’s good, but would never get made by a major studio. it really added to the atmosphere of the movie that they were shooting during the actual euro 2004 in the middle of the actual england fans. it was straight to dvd so i expect the chances of it getting released in the u.s. are about 3%. luckily for y’all, i’ll be bringing it back with me. more luckily for robert, is i will be bringing it to germany. quick, think of a plot so we can shoot a movie during the world cup. will everyone start doing that now at the major tournaments? good scheme for south africa 2010. no, no, we’re going to work…

i went and watched the friendly at a different pub, the queen’s head, yesterday. i had tried to go to this one for the champions league final, but it was completely packed. you couldn’t move, let alone get a drink. it wasn’t that packed this time. a decent amount of people, but didn’t seem unusual compared to when i had passed by before at night. there was a not insignificant number of people not even watching the match. the picture quality was probably the best of anywhere i had gone before. they seem to opt for the attractive women bartenders strategy to lure patrons. always a good choice. although, it may have been the well known “women serving you drinks are more attractive” factor coming into play.

anyway, nothing too remarkable with the match or otherwise. they should try and get steven gerrard to play in mls. yeah right. on a somewhat related note, there was an article that mentioned chelsea’s wages for players is #100 million and abromovich (sp?) has spent #300 million in transfer fees since buying the club. i don’t think mls can compete with that.

crouch did the robot for his goal celebration. not necessarily good, but i can’t say i’ve seen it before. note that just because you haven’t seen something before doesn’t make it good. fashion designers might want to take note of this fact.

i did actually take a picture this time.

that might almost be a good picture. you can’t tell in the picture, but the chandelier in the upper right is made out of antlers of some sort. they also had a mirror framed in antlers.

here’s a couple of other not entirely related pictures that i don’t want to bother putting in another post.

i went to highbury the other day to get one last look and try to get a postcar for joel (unsuccessful, they didn’t have any).

and for comparison, here’s a screen capture from “fever pitch” (can i get kickbacks for linking to netflix?).

i tried to get the apartment they went into as well, but screwed up and got the one immediately to the right of it. whoops.

totally, not related (unless you consider it’s also in islington) is the angel wings from the n1 centre (shopping thing and movie theatre). i would consider them one of the few times something like this actually looks good in its environment.

on the subject of angels, sort of, i don’t think i mentioned that i saw this thing in the local paper that there was a procession of sorts with a guy dressed as jesus (corn of thorns and blood and everything) on upper street and the n1 centre on good friday. i wish i had known in advance. i’m sure it was quite the spectical.

that’s enough of that. at least you got some pictures.