Well, last night I had the privilege of attending a Champions League match at Stamford Bridge: the home of Chelsea FC. I have already been to an international match for England as well as a Premier League match at Fulham but I haven’t had the opportunity to see a Champions League match, so I was pretty excited to go! I didn’t end up working during the day because of the London Tube strike. Unfortunately the tube workers and the city have had a labour dispute going on for over a year now. Since the workers can’t really strike for an extended period of time because it would completely shut the city down, they instead choose one day every month and go on strike with limited service on one of two lines throughout the day. The city responds by increasing bus services through the city centre as well as increasing boat and tram services as well. It affects me because schools normally do not call in for a supply if they can help it because they know that a lot of teachers coming through agencies require the use of the transit system to get to the school. In order to avoid any supply being late they usually opt to use their own teachers or in house supplies to cover off the classes. It was therefore quite a quiet day at Protocol and I didn’t receive any work because of it…but I digress.
After schlepping through my day (and actually being quite productive!) I met with Neale at around 5pm. For those of you who may not remember Neale was the amazing driver who picked me up at the airport when I first arrived in England. A fantastic chap who offered me the ability to go to these matches with him. He picked me up with his son, Stephan, and his mate, Lee. Both of these guys were just a riot and a lot of fun to talk to, they were also both at least 10 years older than me but it didn’t matter because we were having a great time. We ended up picking up Neale’s wife, Helen, and we continued on towards Chelsea for the evening. Helen was so full of energy and life and we were laughing our way through our walk towards the grounds. We were going to be hitting up a restaurant called “Bodean’s” before the match for dinner. This restaurant is a straight up American style steak and rib house right in the heart of Chelsea. We couldn’t get in right away unfortunately because there were a bunch of Spartak Moscow fans taking up tables and saving tables for extended periods of time for friends who hadn’t shown up. We went over to a pub across the way for “Home Fans Only” for a pint and then headed back to convince our way into the restaurant. We did eventually get in and head to squeeze into a table meant for four but it was no problem. We all ended up ordering the “Chelsea Special” which is only available on during Chelsea home matches. My….god. Unbelievable food!!! The special was a FULL rack of ribs, 4 chicken wings, an order of fries, a mountain of coleslaw, and a pint of beer for ₤15!! I was sooooo stuffed afterwards but we had a match to go to! After saying goodbye to Helen the boys headed over to Stamford for the game.
The match itself was really awesome. The stadium is not too big (holds about 40 000) but it’s a lot more modernized than Fulham’s stadium, Craven Cottage. The fans were in a fever and there was a giant section for the Moscow fans. I ended up taking a ton of pictures throughout the match which can be seen on my Facebook profile page. The first half of the match was actually a bit boring. There was no score and Chelsea seemed to play a little worse than I expected with the line-up they threw onto the pitch. Neale was telling me however that their trademark style is to slowly wear teams down and then strike late in the match…boy did they ever. The second half started off quite fast and before I knew it Chelsea was up 3-0. They were also playing towards our end of the pitch so all of the goals were right in front of us. They ended up with a 4-1 victory and the match turned out to be a lot more exciting than originally thought! On the way out I grabbed a match scarf for £5 (I’m going to collect them for all of the matches I attend) and then we were back on our way to Neale’s van to head back.
The ride back took a little while because of the heavy traffic leaving the stadium but we made it back no problem and I was tired as hell having been up since 6:30am that morning. I confirmed with Neale that I’d be going to the next Champions League match at Chelsea on November 23rd with him and Stephan and I definitely look forward to it!
All in all, a crazy awesome night, both in terms of the match and pre-game festivities. That family is awesome to hang out with, they were so funny, and took me under their wing asking me tons of questions and having a great laugh. Neale told me to give him a ring near Christmas as well so we could go out for a couple pints. I’m really glad to have a great hook up of people from the area and Neale’s a great resource if I have any questions :).
I ended up getting work today but I’ll include that in a week end post tomorrow on the teaching side of things. Until then…
Cheers, Love, and Rock The World!!!
Erik
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