Soccer, Football, Soccer, Football, etc.

I went to my first soccer game the other night. Well, I went to my first European soccer game the other night. Lots of confusion at the game when asked if I'd been to a soccer game before. I wasn't sure whether or not to answer yes or no; do my little brother's YMCA games count?

Lots more confusion over the super-cool, apparently Italian (?), (definitely) American girls who, upon discovering that this game was approaching, would text message me asking if I wanted to go to the "football" game.

Florence was playing Milan, the best team in Italy, with certainly Italy's most internationally-acclaimed players, including Ronaldino and David Beckham. Anyway, with Milan being Florence's biggest rival, every year this is Florence's biggest game; the crazy and sometimes hostile fans are especially crazy and sometimes even super duper hostile at this game. Last year, the police had to tear gas many fans who stormed the field and started fighting.

The stadium was huge, and packed. So crowded in fact, that the only plausible explanation for this is that everyone who lives in Florence must have been at that game. The stadium made use of the "high-school football" lighting, which gave out that "high-school football" game vibe, which was cool.



The fans were nuts. Screaming and yelling and even whistling cheers for the entire duration of the game, storming the field when Florence scored (only one point was scored tho, I should note.), I've never heard such a consistently loud group of people anywhere, ever. Well...that is, until Florence lost and all the Florence fans turned against their team, booing them, flicking them off, and screaming curse words at the players as they walked off the field.

The players responded, yelling back, shrugging their shoulders.

The game is fun to watch and it moves fast. The next day, when we told one of our American born professors that we went to the game the night before, he told us that, when compared with European soccer, baseball is almost an intellectual activity. He said that he has tried many times to show baseball to his Italian friends, but that they all become extremely bored very quickly. He said that besides being a very slow game, baseball is also very confusing to those who don't know the game, and almost impossible to explain. He said that his friends are often confused about bat throwing etiquette; in other words, they often ask him what the rules are for throwing down the bat after hitting the ball, insisting that, in order to be a legal bat throw, it must be thrown down in only one certain way.