European Soccer!

  The USA has a lot of different professional sports. Basketball, football, baseball, and hockey just to name a few. Unlike the US, there is only one pro sport that stands out in Europe: soccer (football). Almost every country has a soccer league. LaLiga, the top Spanish soccer league, is one of the biggest leagues in the world. 

I had wanted to go to a European soccer game ever since we got here. When we were in Florence, we almost went to a Fiorentina game, but we couldn’t get tickets. We decided that we would try and get tickets to a game in Valencia, since we were also going to be there for a month. Valencia CF is the LaLiga team in Valencia, but they only had one game while we were there. We would have to get tickets ahead of time if we wanted to go to a game. 

While we were still in Florence, my dad got us 4 tickets to Valencia CF vs Real Betis on November 10. I’d been excited to go ever since then, and it was almost time. The only problem was that I got sick the day before the game. Luckily, I felt much better the next day, game day.

We left our apartment around 6 PM. The game was at 8 so we had 2 hours to get dinner, and walk to the stadium. We walked to the Mercat de Colón to eat dinner. I had a chicken wrap with potato chips, and it was pretty good. We left the market around 7:15, and started walking toward Camp de Mestalla, Valencia’s home stadium. It was only a 15 minute walk, but we saw lots of people celebrating before the game even started. We were in our seats by 7:45. We were up pretty high, but we still had a great view of the field. My dad said that Camp de Mestalla is known for having very steep seats to give unrestricted views of the field, and that’s exactly what it was like. 

The first thing they do at sporting events in The USA is play the national anthem, but that’s not what they did here. I’m not sure exactly what they played, it could have been a Valencian anthem, or just the team anthem. Almost everyone except us in the stadium was signing it, but we didn’t know the words, and the words were in Spanish.

There weren’t any goals scored in the first half, but there was still a lot of action. Yunus Musah is a Valencia player, and he’s also a USA Soccer team member. He had a bunch of chances to score, but none of them ended with a goal. I was hoping that Yunus wouldn’t get injured because the US needed him in the World Cup, so when he got subbed off I was happy.

Right before the second half started, it started to thunderstorm. We went inside for about 5 minutes because my sister was freaking out, but she calmed down and we went back to our seats. Fifteen minutes into the half, a Real Betis player got a red card, which means that he’s eliminated from the game and Betis can only play with 10 men instead of 11. It also gave Valencia a free kick, where they scored their first goal of the day. Less than 20 minutes later, Valencia was fouled inside of the box, so they got a penalty kick. Penalty kicks are almost unstoppable, so Valencia was able to score their second goal. As the clock crept closer to the 90th minute, we figured the game would end 2-0, but then Valencia got a break away. They ended up scoring again to make the score 3-0. 

Even though it was pouring rain during the entire second half, I still had a lot of fun. I would go back to another game of European soccer if I ever get the chance to again. This was Valencia’s last game until December 31st, but there will be a World Cup to watch over the next few weeks. Last time there was a World Cup, we were also in Europe, and I loved watching the games. I hope that this year we can find a good restaurant to go sit and watch a bunch of games at.

Popular posts from this blog

We Made It Home!

Image
  After 99 days in Europe, we made it back home. It’s hard to believe that we went to 9 countries since the last time we were here. In September the only countries I had been to were the USA, Canada, Italy, and Portugal. I added England, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Spain on this trip. We spent the least amount of time in Germany, spending only 1 night in Ulm. Even though we weren’t in the country for much more than 24 hours, I still enjoyed it. My favorite thing we did was go to a beer garden in Munich. I wrote about it in one of my earlier blogs, and I still think it was one of the best meals we had. I had currywurst and a giant pretzel, which is very stereotypical German. We spent 2 nights in 3 other countries; Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland. Belgium was the first EU country we went to on this trip. We spent all our time there in Brussels, the capital. My favorite thing in Belgium was the Atomium. I wrote about the Atomium in one of m
Read more

Barcelona and Toulouse

Image
  Our month in Valencia ended on Wednesday. From there we had 2 weeks left until we will go home. We spent the first day in Barcelona, and the next week we spent traveling in France, and the last week will be in London.  All the trains from Valencia to anywhere in France go through Barcelona, so we decided we would stay a night there instead of taking a really long train. We stayed in a hotel near the train station so we wouldn’t have to carry all of our luggage around the whole city. When we came to Barcelona on the way to Valencia we stayed near La Sagrada Familia, so we were in a completely different neighborhood.  After we checked into the hotel we wandered towards Plaça d'Espanya. The first thing I noticed were 2 tall towers. In between the towers was a road, and if you stand in the middle of the road, you get a great view of the Palau Nacional de Montjuïc and the towers. The Palau Nacional de Montjuïc is the National Art Museum of Catalonia. I tried to take a good pictu
Read more