Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Chelsea at Cowboys Stadium

Wow, what a time!! On July 26th, Collin went to watch Chelsea (my favority soccer club) play Club America in the new Cowboy's Stadium in Arlington. Our tickets were in the Chelsea section and only 8 rows from the field in the corner of the pitch. My buddy was able to make it available to us to see the whole stadium (you are only supposed to access one section of the stadium upon entry) and we got free snacks and drinks.

When we moved into our house in Grapevine we got a new TV package that included Fox Soccer Channel and that finally enabled me to watch more soccer. I've always been interested in English Premier League soccer and I have watched the World Cup pretty closely since 1986. But this new opportunity allowed me to actually get into the English Premier League on a consistent basis.

After watching many Premier League games, I really wanted a rooting interest so I contacted several of my friends who were from the UK and knew soccer. At first, I didn't want to support one of the "Big 4" teams (Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea) and considered teams that were close to the Cotswalds where my mom lived for over 5 years. But after much discussion and research, I settled on Chelsea. There are many reasons that I support Chelsea including their colors, the rampant lion and roses on their badge (reminders of the Enright coat of arms), thier players, and their location (close to a great part of London so I might actually be able to attend a home game sometime). After watching Chelsea for two seasons, I've become quite "obsessive" in my wife's opinion.

So, when I found out that Chelsea was coming to play in Dallas I knew I had to go! We got to the stadium early to watch the pre-game and check out the stadium and really enjoyed the environment. It was great to really be at a "football" match with my team on the pitch. I only regret two things: 1.) that we were not in our seats close to the field during Chelsea's goals but were watching from the suite while getting snacks and 2.) it wasn't an English match so we didn't learn that many chants and cheers.

The match was a pre-season tournament and I knew ahead of time that we wouldn't see many of the star players such as John Terry (the captain), Drogba, Anelka, Lampard, Ballack, and Cech was not in goal at all. It was still a thrill to get to see them and watch them play. They won the tournament and displayed their greatness beating some of the top teams from Italy and Mexico.