San Jose Earthquakes Vs Canada (Spartan Stadium San Jose, Saturday 5th June 2004)

I got free tickets to this game from my Southampton supporting friend Alvin, his company have season tickets for corporate entertaining - It wasn't an executive box with
Prawn Sandwiches, we had a six inches space each on a bench seat. The stadium was built for San Jose State University and clearly not designed for ‘soccer’ because you can't see all the way to the touchline on the near side; you actually miss quite a bit of the wing play. On the way into the stadium Alvin made some sarcastic comment like "Who is this Thomas Razzle-inski then?" So I reminded him of the injury time winner he put past Saints at Goodison last year, which shut him up pretty quickly.

After the national anthems beautifully sung by the 'Cisco Singers', we were ready
to go. There was quite a good crowd (7,013) a mix of Mexicans(who make up about
30% of Californians these days), some itinerant Europeans, middle class white Californian families (‘soccer mom’ types) and quite a few Canadians. Behind the goals were the hard-core fans singing and banging drums and tambourines; they did strange versions of all the favorite English chants.

Radzinski looked quite lively but the pitch was small and he didn't seem to have the space to open them up with his pace, after 20 minutes the ball was deflected to him in the box and he hit it nicely first time to open the scoring for Canada (The announcer said: Scoring play by Number 9 Radzinski for Canada with no assist). The Quakes had a goal disallowed for offside, which was a bit embarrassing coz they had already set off the pyrotechnics and we all got covered in streamers and confetti for nothing.

Soon it was clearly time for the home fans to get behind 'The Quakes' so a cheerleader on our side of the stadium held a up big card saying 'Go' and we all obediently yelled 'Go', on the other side of the stadium another cheerleader held up a sign saying 'Quakes' and so on and so forth until we had quite a good 'Go Quakes' chant going round the ground. When the cheerleaders stopped holding up the prompt cards, we all sat down and got back to our beer, hot dogs and nachos. 'Soccer' doesn't lend itself to US style of watching sport, it has no breaks for you to get on with the serious business of eating and drinking.

At half time we had fun watching the mascot (a huge blue furry Smurf like thing) catapulting free T Shirts into the crowd, it was probably the most noise the crowd made all night.

Ten minutes into the second half and the first corner of the game - the announcer
comes over the tannoy - "A corner penalty to Canada brought to you by Western Union Banks - Western Union there's always a branch right around the corner" - Priceless!

Canada got another, a shot that took a deflection and they gave it as an own goal, seemed a bit harsh to me (they didn’t say if it was with no assist). Then they got a third a nice move started by Radz beating a man on the right hand side and delivering a decent cross in. San Jose got a penalty so we got the pyrotechnics again and the Smurf Mascot did his dance and they played Blur’s song 2 on the tannoy and all was good.

Ten minutes later there was a power failure, I was quite impressed with the outrage the crowd showed when the Ref stopped the game and went to talk to the coaches. There was a spontaneous chant of 'Play, play, play" around the ground, this kind of fan initiative and spontaneity is almost unheard of in American sport. They did carry on the game for another 15 minutes or so, the only other interesting event was when Landon Donavon (closest US Soccer has to a David Beckham type superstar) came on to great cheers, he clattered into somebody on what would have been his first touch of the ball, had he not arrived well after it was played. Donovan did show a few good touches and looked half decent. On 75 minutes it was getting a bit dark so the Ref called it a day, nobody really minded, the beer and food stands were all closed anyway.

After 4 years living here it was my first 'Soccer' game in the US. It was very much like going to a baseball game, in that the events on the field are secondary to the Mascot buggering around, free T Shirts, being told when to 'make some noise', eating food and drinking some beer. Now I need to sort out tickets for the pre season games in Houston - I hear they do great nachos there – can’t wait!