soccer vs football

After spending the first few days of being home at my boyfriend's parents cottage (ask a Brit what cottaging means :)) on Georgian Bay, basking in all the glory that the Canadian wilderness has to offer -  crystal clear, swimmable fresh water, caught that day trout, autumn coloured mixed forests as far as the eye can see, wildlife buzzing, hopping and slithering (yes we saw snakes aplenty), we decided to check out a soccer match.

On Tuesday, the Canadian men's team took on El Salvador in a prelim stage of the World Cup qualification. Canada was already sitting on top of their group, and we came to the game expecting the far superior Canadian side to trounce El Salvador. The crowd was a decent size, probably filling 80% of BMO stadium. Not exactly a roaring Wembley Stadium crowd, but considering where Canada is in the world ranking, pretty decent I thought.

Differences between watching a soccer game in Toronto and a football match in London:

1. Prematch - I have lived beside Arsenal stadium for 4 years and before every match huge throngs of people will be chanting songs all specific to Arsenal. The crowd prior to the match was good natured, but pretty well silent. However, almost everyone was wearing team Canada memorabilia, so fairly decent from that point of view.

2. Beer  - $10 (yowzah) at BMO stadium, but it was sold. You can't get beer to take to your seat during Arsenal matches anymore. people get way too aggressive apparently.

3. Cheering - at football matches in England crowds are constantly cheering and chanting. Chants are given and responded to, and depend on what's happening in the game. The feeble attempts at chants during the Canadian game were a bit embarrassing. 'Ca-na-da' on repeat doesn't really tell a story. 

4. Dickheads - at any football match in England you can expect there to be a few die hard terrifying fans that scream obscenities and potentially turn on their teams when the team isn't doing well. This was one element of the game I was excited about escaping. Unfortunately, after we switched our seats to the north side of the field for the 2nd half (advantage BMO stadium for not checking tickets), we sat behind some miserable gits who not only shouted racist, sexist and homophobic slurs at our own team, but also had no clue about soccer full-stop. Yelling 'run number 9' every time anyone got the ball was almost more painful to hear than their close minded prejudice (almost). In England, everyone understands the game, and of course opinions differ, but the chat on football is educated and entertaining. Also, everyone knows who the players are, so 'number 9' would never, ever be heard.

5. The players - the English generally don't like that a lot of their players are from different backgrounds, you hear grumblings at pubs etc, whereas the Canadians seem to embrace these differences, with players from Scotland, Jamaica, Guyana, the Philippines, Greece and probably more  rounding out the Canadians. 

6. The game itself - The sheer volume of players and money that go into football in England make this comparison entirely unfair. Canada dominated and held possession very well, but just couldn't come up with enough scoring opportunities. I blame lack of taking people on 1v1, and a nature that's too unselfish. We were also unlucky with Iain Hume tearing a muscle part way through the first half. 

In all, if one of the few attempts Canada had on net went it, and we had duct tape to shut up the idiots behind us, it would have been a pretty enjoyable experience, but some decent cheers would go a long way in terms of atmosphere.