It’s been a little week of Liverpool heaven for me. LFC are doing their pre-season tour here so I was lucky enough to go to a Legends night in Hollywood which was a Q&A with Fowler, Rush, McAllister & Garcia followed by a Beatles Tribute band. I’m not sure many of the crowd would have understood a word Robbie or Gary Mac said and Paul McCartney was quite possibly Luis Suarez in a wig but I had a great time. It was a warm up to the game on Wednesday night where we played Chelsea in the International Champions Cup.
Going to the match is of course one of the things I miss and with the time difference I feel a little out of touch sometimes so I was very excited to go. Playing Chelsea was also a good thing as I thought it would be like going to a game back home. Hahahahahahaha.
I bought my ticket on Groupon ($39)
My ticket said 8pm kick off but Liverpool’s website said 835pm. I called to ask and they said ‘Opening Ceremonies’ would be at 8pm with the kick off half an hour later. ‘Wow’ I thought, ‘It’s going to be like the Olympics!’
I won’t bore you with LA traffic stories but it took me two hours to drive the 25 miles to the stadium. I knew this would happen so I was still in time for ‘Opening Ceremonies’.
I arrived at the stadium and thought maybe I had arrived at Disney, Universal or maybe even Jurassic Park. I even looked for the monorail! I don’t know if it was the 27 degree temperature, the mist spraying the crowd, the smell from the popcorn / kettle-corn / pizza / pretzel / burger / hotdog / corndog stands or the constant loudspeaker announcements welcoming the crowd to the ‘soccer arena’. It might even have been the heat and the smell from the not too far away Santa Clarita wildfire but Anfield this was not!
Still, I was excited to be there. They said there was no Liverpool end. Imagine my surprise when I saw that all of the Liverpool fans somehow knew to sit one end and all of the Chelsea fans the other! Any guesses where me and my Groupon were sat?
I still stood and sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ (somehow doing that in the middle of a crowd of American Chelsea fans is a lot less threatening than say Stamford Bridge!) I was still standing when they announced the National Anthem. ‘Wow' I thought (again!) ‘Look at us Brits being patriotic abroad!’ as everyone put their hands on their hearts and turned to the American Flag. Luckily the 1923 Flag Code 'leaves out a punishment for violating its requirements, so there are no legal consequences for those who break its rules’!!
Ok so that was the ‘Opening Ceremonies’ over with (!!!!) On to the game.
The highlights (clearly this is not a match report) were the many ‘yellow card cautions’, my favorite being when the announcer (they love an announcement apparently!) attributed one to the wrong player and then had to apologise and it probably wasn’t much fun for Fabregas having his ‘red card ejection’ announced to the crowd.
If there were any dull moments then the crowd could wave down one of the many people selling all of the aforementioned snacks and have them come to their seat. Oh and there was candy floss as well!
As you can probably imagine everything is sponsored. The attendance announcement was sponsored and the half time ads consisted of names of companies popping up on the screen and a voiceover just saying the name. Very weird. Somebody literally just said ‘Groupon, Geico, McDonalds, Gatorade’ etc over and over again. They should bring George Sephton next time and his top ten from County Rd.
I couldn’t tell you who the man of the match was but they made sure that we knew who the 'Uber driver of the match’ was and very glamorous she looked too!
So that was it. My first experience of the footy in the US. I’m not sure I’ll be rushing out to watch Galaxy any time soon. I think I would rather stick with my memories of watching football in the freezing rain, with the over priced pies that you have to get yourself and the hilarious commentary from the crowd around you who call it football and know that Liverpool rhymes with shiverpool and not driverpool.
Despite how crazy it all was I did I love watching the team play and I’m definitely glad I went. To quote Stevie himself itself 'It’s strange really. Being so far away and then your club rolls into town!’
That was kind of awesome!
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