Monday, February 13, 2006

Soccer: USA vs. Japan

Friday night, Feb 10, 8pm

Watched a live soccer match. Friendly game, USA vs. Japan. As those who know me well, I was never really into soccer. Well, a partner of the firm part-sponsored the tickets, so I went for it! A group of us (not unexpectedly, mostly foreigners) went for it.

Was kinda fun, actually. We went to the SBC Park, up in San Francisco. There was a record turn-out of more than 37,000 in attendance. The USA team had not been in to SF in 26 years. I was surprised that they even had a soccer team for 26 years. And even more surprised that there are that many supporters of the game. I mostly thought it was more a women's game here in the US.

The match itself was pretty one-sided. By end of first half, the score was 2-0 in favour of USA. Most of the time, the ball was in Japan's half of the field. Very slow response of the strikers, and they could not pass well. Second half was more exciting, and the match ended 3-2 in favour of USA. At least the Japanese fought back well in the 2nd half. I suspect that the Japanese team actually fielded their second team. The Nakata fella was not there. There was a bunch of Japanese teens sitting near us, cheering "Nippon, nippon" but mostly drown out by the US supporters.

The weather was kinda weird in SF. It was unusually warm and sunny for this whole week, very uncharacteristically of the winter season. Must be the global warming... anyhow, as we drove up to SF, the fog came in and at the stadium itself, the wind of chillingly cold.... brrr....

But this was a fun outing. Hope the partner will sponsor more events like these!

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