Seeing Red in London

Last weekend an estimated 1 billion viewers worldwide watched live coverage of the Arsenal versus Manchester United soccer match at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal’s ground in London. This is an incredible number and testimony to the “beautiful game’s” popularity. As is usual with big matches it never really lived up to the pre match hype but still managed to entertain with a 2-2 draw.

We get many requests for tickets from people wanting to see a Premier League soccer match involving some of the “big” sides – notably Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Our answer is always the same – we can’t get tickets to any matches involving these clubs. The only tickets generally available, unless you have a well connected aquaintance, are the ones through the specialist ticket companies that also provide hospitality before, during and after the game for absolutely staggering amounts of money in my opinion ($300 min).

If you are visiting Britain and want to see a Premier League match look at some of the other clubs. I myself go to see Birmingham City in the Premiership – not that I really support them but they’re the closest team to my home and I can get tickets to see the club for most home matches through their web site. A friend goes to Fulham in London for much the same reason. Everton are a good bet if you’re “up north”. Ticket prices are also reasonable (ish!) and I would not to expect to pay more than £32 ($64) for a ticket. For info on all Premier League matches visit http://www.premierleague.com/ you’ll find good info on all the matches and links to buy tickets on the site.

Then of course there are the many hundreds of lower league sides dotted around Britain, where, for less than the price of a skinny latte at Starbucks, you get an hour and a half of passion, guts and thunder and a real understanding of why this game is so important to some of us. Bill Shankly, theLiverpool manager in the 1960’s summed it up when he said “Football is not a matter of life or death – it’s much more important than that”.

Tonight will see me on the terraces at Newport, South Wales where I now live, watching the Welsh Premier Cup game against Bangor City a team with a proud history from North Wales. Tonight I’ll be supporting Bangor as it’s the team that I played for in my youth as did my father before me. It may be a million miles from a Premiership game but for an hour and a half this evening I won’t notice.

C’mon Bangor….. C’mon Bangor….

Keith Roberts