During the Thanksgiving break I went to London with my gal  Lindsay and her folks.  Over the next few days, I’m sharing some of  the highlights with you.

Today: Playing a game of footie

My good friend Mike moved to London about three years ago for work.  He is an avid sports fan like myself.  Since we both grew up in the Chicagoland area we’re both Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks fans.  As far as baseball, he’s for the Cubs and I’m a White Sox guy.  When he first moved to London he told me that the whole soccer craze or as they call it “footie” is just plain strange and he would make every effort to still watch Bears games and follow the Bulls and Cubs even though London is six hours ahead of Chicago.  I remember him staying up until 3am London time to catch the end of a Monday Night Bears match-up.

That’s all changed.

While he still keeps track of Chicago teams he has became a big fan of soccer.  He invited me to see his new favorite team Fulham when I came to visit.  I had to see what all the fuss was about so I went to a game with him.

The team he chose Fulham is an old club that’s been around since the late 1800’s.  They play in a stadium that seats about 23,000.  Some of the other teams he could have chosen have stadiums that seat about 60 to 80,000.  Fulham’s stadium is sort of the “Wrigley Field” of London soccer circuit.  Despite being the “Friendly Confines” of Europe the fans are still very passionate and do scream at the players.

Every team apparently has different cheers they do for their team. It’s very similar to chants you would hear in the student section of a Badger game.  However, one of  the chants the fans do for Fulham is song to the tune of John Denver’s “Country Road Take Me Home.”  They used different words, but it was the same tune.  Very strange.

The game was kinda exciting.  Fulham beat Blackburn 3 – 0.  I got to see three goals, which is kinda a big deal in soccer or footie or whatever I should be calling it.

I’m not sure I’m ready to dump American sport for the world’s most popular game, but I kinda can see the attraction.  Now if I could  just get the crowd to sing “When you say Fulham Football…you’ve said it all!”  That has a much better ring to it.