Saturday Soccer...

On Saturday afternoon Ben and I went over to New Jersey to the Red Bull Arena to watch the New York Red Bulls play the Houston Dynamo...

A few months ago, when I was on the way to Ikea on the train I saw what I thought looked like a space station in the middle of field surrounded by barns... well, that space station turns out to be the Red Bull Arena!

It seemed like a nice new stadium, but it felt like it was completely in the middle of no where. Ben was saying it couldn't have been more different walking to the Red Bull Arena than walking to Elland Road in Leeds. The were lots of families with young children making their way to the stadium, rather than big crowds of angry drunk people... it was all far more civilised, the way it should be!

When we got into the arena we got ourselves a quick bite to eat, two hotdogs, two portions of chips and two pints, all for the reasonable price of $40!!! I couldn't believe it... they obviously make a LOT of money from the concession stands.

It was a little bit quiet when we first arrived, and only filled up a little bit when the game actually started, but there was still a good atmosphere in the arena...

There was one section, just behind the goal that was ram-packed with a group of fans called the Viking Army, that had flags from all over the world and they were chanting through-out the whole game. Considering how relatively empty the arena was, they made it sound like there were far more fans watching...

It was very funny when the announcer was introducing the teams, when the Houston Dynamo's came onto the field, they Empirial March theme from Star Wars was playing and the annoucner didn't put much effort in to the names at all, but then when the Red Bulls came out it was a different story...

Llllllllllllaadies and Gentllllllllllemen! Pllllllleeeeeeeeeeease welcome your Neeew Yooooork Reeeeeeed Buuuuuullllls!!!

I had never heard of any of the players, apart from the captain - Thierry Henry!

It was a bit of a boring first half, there were a few close calls but nothing that exciting happened (although you'd think it was the most exciting game in the world listening to the Viking Army!)

During half time Ben and I went to the 'beer garden' for another expensive drink ($11 for one pint!!!). The term 'beer garden' has never been used so loosely, it was more or less a penned off area by the car park that had a few tables to stand at, the beer stations at three of the corners of the 'garden' and a couple of 'garden games'... I imagine that during the summer it'll be lovely and really popular, but on Saturday night it was freezing cold and there weren't many fans around so the been garden was a bit of a lonely place. So we decided to head back to our seats.

Just as we were walking through the arena we heard a lot of screaming and managed to get into a spot where we could see the pitch just in time to see the first Red Bulls goal!

Smoke machines went off and there were confetti canons and the crowd (all 13,000 out of 40,000 of them) went bonkers. It wasn't long after we'd got back to our seats that the Houston Dynamo had equalised. The second half was faaaaar more exciting that the first, they must have been given a right talking to in the changing rooms!

We were both amazed how well organised everything was after the match, despite the 13,000 people leaving the arena at the same time, there were no crushes, no queues, and we somehow managed to walk to the tiny train station and walk straight onto the small Path train that took us back to Manhattan. If only leaving a UK arena could be that smooth.

It was a great experience, and another New York sports team to chalk up - maybe Basketball's next?! Who knows...