I hate when they (yankees) call it soccer. By word ‘football’ Americans understand a game closely related to rugby, but in this game they barely touch the (oval shaped) ball with their feet! They should call it ‘catchball’ and rename NFL (National Football League) to NCL (unfortunate match with Norwegian Cruise Line). Althought I respect the long standing history of American football, I believe that football (as it is known in the rest of the world) is the game of Gods.
I`m not a big fan of ‘sports travel’, but every time when I go abroad my goal is to see some goals (pun :). The most desirable destinations within football season are Spain, UK, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Greece, Turkey (order matters). Putting aside the game itself, visitig those huge stadiums is quite tremendous experience.
Few years ago I participated in “Latvian Nationwide Song and Dance Celebration” at the ‘Skonto’ stadium with capacity of 8000 seats. I thought that never in my life I would see together so many people… until I entered “Estadio Balaidos” in Vigo (Spain). This stadium capacity is 32000 seats – more than inhabitants in town I live.
The most beautiful stadium I saw in Portugal city Braga where one side of pitch is situated at huge cliff. “Estadio Municipal de Braga” stadium had played host to two matches of the 2004 European Football Championship and one of these games was on 23rd June 04 Holland vs Latvia (3:0), with 22258 spectators. I`m pretty sure – that was the first and last time, when Latvia national team played in Euro final tournament (for the record other two LV games was with Germany (1:1) and Czech Republic (1:2)).
While in Latvia club football level is in poor shape, not so far from us we can enjoy the highest level European competition – Champions League. Kiev is not only home of famous football club “Dynamo“, Ukraine capital city (founded 482 A.D. – 1000 years before C.C. discovered America), where almost 3 million people live, can be proud of “Olimpiyskiy Stadion” with capacity 83000 seats (it is the 3rd largest stadium in Europe).
So at the end of November we (me and some my friends) are heading East – at 27th November “Dynamo” are playing with Francesco Totti club “Roma“.
Some snapshot of “Olimpiyskiy Stadion” from YouTube:
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