Football Crazy, Football Mad

3^rd November 2013

I have managed to reach the grand old age of twenty three without ever actually seeing a real life football match. Yes, I’ve pretended to watch the odd World Cup qualifier or Champions League final, but I’ve never been to an actual stadium, until today! A few teachers from school arranged a trip to watch the local football team, Beijing Guo’an. It was their last match of the season and after some humming and ha-ing, I decided to give it a go.

There were soldiers everywhere!

 The match was in the Workers Stadium, which is one of the Ten Great Buildings. These building were built in 1959, to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China and here is where I would tell you more about them but China has blocked the Wikipedia page, so that will have to do! Despite trying to find a reputable ticket office we ended up buying tickets from touts who refused to accept anything below 110RMB (£11) which was more than what we thought but still not too shabby. They also assured us that all eleven seats were beside each other. They were not. Thankfully I’m not a true football fan so this didn’t bother me in the slightest and I happily stood and watched the match, sort of. I say sort of because watching one little football for ninety minutes seemed silly when there was so much going on around me. A more poetic person might comment on the unity that sport can bring or the power is has to transcend language, race and nationalities but really I just thought it was cool that everyone was getting so in to it.

While I don’t think I’ll be buying a season ticket any time soon, I did have a really enjoyable day which was made even better by dinner! I’m not a diehard pizza fan but who am I to turn down a Tube Station pizza, aka the biggest pizza in Beijing?! When we were full of pizza/asked to leave because the table was reserved for another party we headed to an off-licence which doubled up as a bar/restaurant and served Root Beer – talk about a diamond in the rough! It’s always the days that you don’t plan that turn out to be the best; getting home to a nil-nil Everton draw couldn’t even ruin it ;)