My First International Soccer Match

This weekend I went to watch the US Men’s National Team play in the CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football… it just rolls off of the tongue) Gold Cup. It was part of a triple-header that also included:

The New England Revolution vs. the Kansas City Wizards of Major League Soccer (nobody cares)

USA vs. Haiti

Honduras vs. Grenada (I didn’t stay to watch fearing for my life)

Now the Gold Cup has been interesting this far it has included the Mexican coach kicking an opposing player in the groin during a match, which almost led to a riot. (Somewhere Woody Hayes is in the netherworld and pissed he didn’t think of that.) So when I found out the final first round game was to be played in the Boston area I decided to go. Being soccer the game of course wasn’t sold out. In fact I bought tickets right at midfield twelve rows up while the first game of the triple-header was going on. (Soccer fever, catch it!)

Here are some observations, thoughts, and things I was thinking about during the day.

-Tailgating: There was a huge tailgating scene just like your typical NFL game with a few slight differences. This scene featured kicking around a soccer ball, listening to music where I couldn’t understand what they were saying, and zero white people including no fat guys with their chests painted. (So except for the music that was a positive thing.)

-I was a minority: When I went to the bathroom at the end of the first half I decided to play a fun game called, “Count the other white dudes in the bathroom line.” There were three… I felt my iron grip on the country erode as my penis shrunk into my body cavity while urinating.

-Women from Honduras are really ugly. There has to be a theory for this, like maybe any country between Mexico and Brazil there is a hotness vacuum in Central and South America.

case in point

-Speaking of Honduras I really wish we were playing them instead of Haiti. The trash talk between their fans and us would have been so much more fun to participate in…. Like, “Who is your President now?” “Coups are for third world countries.” (Wait international political humor, what am I trying to attempt here?)

Of course you could always go with the much more racist trash talk like, “I guess a lot of hotel rooms in Boston aren’t getting cleaned today.” But this isn’t Europe, we don’t mix our sports with our racist tendencies, right Cardinal fans?

Latin ballplayers = gardeners

The thing is there isn’t much you can say to the other teams. With Haiti, there were a TON of Haitians there, I guess you could say things like, “Wyclef sucks.” Or perhaps, “For 70 cents a day can I really feed a member of your family?”

As far as Grenada goes I didn’t see one single person there wearing anything with Grenada on it or carrying their flag, which leads me to believe that the country isn’t real, and it was just created during the 80s for Ronald Reagan to invade. I think though that the best line I could have dropped would have been, “So where exactly in Africa is Grenada?” (See it is funny because it is in the Caribbean… Uh never mind.)

The actual game was pretty exciting with the United States tying Haiti in the final minutes, which led to me having to explain to my date that there are ties in soccer and explaining that it was kind of like kissing a Honduran girl. Sure you are kissing a woman but on the other side she is ugly as sin, so it is a wash.

Ah international soccer, you have to love it.