Tales From The London Sports World

(The author of the post just returned home after spending 2 whole nights in London.)

It does not need to be said but football (or as we dumb Americans call it, soccer) is the most popular sport in London. Rugby is also quite popular in the area, though nothing comes close to football. Though I spent the majority of time in London in the Boroughs of Westminster and London (yes, London has boroughs like NYC and yes, one of London's Boroughs is named London; as one can imagine, it is in the center of the city), where no football team is directly based, which made things quite interesting when shopping in souvenir stores because not one team's materials dominated the area. I obviously did not go into every souvenir/sports store in London, but those that I did go in did not seem to favor any one team over the other. The four teams most prominent were the EPL's 4 biggest teams: Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, and Arsenal. For some reason though, of those 4, I saw the least Liverpool items. Maybe it is because their English accents are ridiculously hard to understand. Or because no one outside their own fanbase likes them.

Regardless, I managed to pick up a Frank Lampard Chelsea jersey (I am wearing it now) for a very cheap price. Before the Philadelphia Union, I was never really into club soccer that much, just the international tournaments. Philadelphia had no team. I did not have any connection with any team at all. It was just something that I could not get into. But now I have found myself being drawn to club teams. Maybe it is just that it is coming off the World Cup. Maybe it is that I have been to several European cities now and am getting a better feel for the leagues over there. Maybe it is starting with the Union that now that I have one, I am finding more and more. Whatever the reason may be, at this point, my three favorite clubs are: Philadelphia Union, FC Barcelona, and Chelsea.

Aspeaking of FC Barcelona, I saw something in London that I never thought I would ever see in London: a Lionel Messi FC Barcelona jersey. Funny thing, though, there was something even stranger for London right next that: a Lionel Messi Argentina jersey. Yes, this is London, England I am talking about.

I was hoping to watch an EPL game while I was over there, but BBC was not showing any games when I was watching TV and for some reason the hotel TV could not pick up a signal from Sky Sports on Sunday.

Enough about soccer and onto a sport that I always wanted to know more about, but never saw an actual game of it until my time in London: cricket. Having been to Europe several times, I can safely say that baseball is not popular at all there. That being said, cricket is a pretty big sport overseas that shares some similarities with baseball. There are different forms of cricket and while the 5 day matches would be a little too much for me, a recently new brand of cricket caught my attention: Twenty20 cricket. One night when there was nothing going on, myself and My Brother The Vikings Fan were channel surfing and saw a cricket match on Sky Sports. Seeing as cricket is a sport that I wanted to know more about, I wanted to watch more of it. As things turned out, it was the championship match of the Friends Provident t20 Cricket league between Somerset and Hampshire. I only later found out that this is a cricket league in its first year, but the match was thoroughly intriguing for me with an incredibly wild finish.



I can't say for sure how popular this form of cricket is or how diehard cricket fans feel about cricket games lasting only 3 hours and 30 minutes (the approximate length of a twenty20 cricket match), but the match I saw was thoroughly entertaining. Also helping was the incredible closeness of the match and the wild finish.

Something that I was very curious about heading into London was the popularity of the now annual NFL game played at Wembley Stadium. Over here, I think it is seen as more of a pain in the neck than anything else, especially for the teams and the fans of those teams playing in that game. Over in London, it is actually a pretty big deal and is fairly popular among the London faithful. No one is ever going to mistake London for Green Bay, but the NFL's marketing attempts do seem to be working. The couple of people that I talked to about this do care when the NFL makes their yearly trip to London. It garners attention, it garners media, it garners publicity, etc. People in the USA may not like or care about the NFL's game in London, but Roger Goddell's attempt to gain international attention for the NFL seem to be working.

I was hoping to see a rugby match. Never got a chance. I was also hoping to drive past Stamford Bridge or Wembley Stadium. Never got there (though unbeknownst to me at the time, I did spend some time in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which borders the Borough Hammersmith and Fulham; the site of Stamford Bridge).