Last night I went to my first professional football game. And I'm not talking American Football (although the Broncos did a fantastic job spanking the Kansas City Chiefs last night - woot!). I'm talking about real football - the kind you actually play with your feet.
It was gorgeous weather and FC Zurich was playing against the Bern Young Boys so my cousin Estella and her husband Matt decided to take me to the game. Clearly I was rooting for FC Zurich since I live in Zurich and "Young Boys" is a lame team name. How masculine can you sound chanting for young boys? You just end up sounding like a pedophile. When we got to the game we realized that we weren't the only ones that had the briliant idea of taking advantage of the unusually nice weather to enjoy some good ol' sports because the entire Zurich fan section was completely sold out. We had two options: Pay 60 CHF for each ticket or try to sit in the opposing team fan section for half the price. We took off all of our fan gear, shoved it in my over-sized purse, and opted for the half price tickets.
Why do you ask did we hide our true team alliance like cowards? Because in Europe every fan team is like the Oakland Raiders. Violent. There's a reason the stadium was constructed to prevent the opposing fans on each other's side - because you will get shanked. (And Bern probably has something to prove because their team name is "Young Boys".)
So besides hiding our true colors and just keeping our opinions to ourselves when either team scored, we blended right in (with the exception that we spoke English the whole time so my cousin and her husband's dialect wouldn't give them away). Ok, so we didn't exactly blend right in. We spoke in English, we weren't wearing black and yellow like a bumble bee (and the Young Boys), and we didn't have a GIANT homemade flag or fireworks and flares. Yes, these people brought fire. To a sports game. And since the police are too scared to see what happens when the handful of officers take on a couple hundred angry, armed with fire, flag waving, drunk, very opinionated fans, the most they do is make an announcement to remind everyone that bringing such items to the sports arena is illegal (subtext "not inforced"). The best part of the idea to bring fire to the game is that they wave their gigantic flags (probably made with highly flammable paint) right over the flares. Way to show your smartness Bern!
[Not like CU games are much better when such items like alcohol, marshmallows, tortillas, and batteries are banned items from the stadium - but that's a whole other blog topic in itself.]
Well it was a blast watching professional soccer (aka soccer not played by my sister and all of her friends [no offense Liz!]) as well as people watching and in the end the game was tied so there were no disgruntled fans on either side. And the food was all dropped to half price after the game: BONUS!
Here's a video of the fan madness that is the Bern Young Boys:
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