Laura: The Secret To British Soccer: Keep It Simple

Last night was a wonderful cultural experience. We learned that while we might have a lot in common with our British cousins, we sure celebrate our sports differently. First off, we Americans expect a good dose of high tech with our sporting events, as evidenced by our jumbotrons and our numerous fancy scoreboards with an abundance of pictures and statistics. The British place no premium on technology during their games. The electronic displays began and ended with one very small scoreboard and a bizarre lighted advertising band that surrounded the field and flashed continuously through the entire game at the shoulder level of the players. I sincerely hope none of the players are epileptic! When a player was substituted, the only way you could know what was going on was to either either listen very closely to the mumbling announcer or else to glimpse the man on the sidelines briefly holding up a small board that resembles a Lite-Brite on which he shows the number of the player coming out and the number of the player replacing him. As Americans, we expect a sporting event to come with light shows, organ music, dancers, a half-time show and cheerleaders. Fulham had none of these. AS for the mascot, his repertoire consisted of jumping up and down while clapping and occasionally turning a crooked cartwheel that would embarrass a 10-year-old. You might be tempted to simply believe that the English are more dedicated to the sport and less to the entertainment, but that would be wrong. From what we could tell, the dedicated fans are far more interested in what the opposition's fans are doing than what their own team is accomplishing on the field. The group of seven devoted Fulham fans sitting in front of us missed several key plays because they were engaging in tit-for-tat shouting and fist-pumping with fans of the other team. (I missed the plays, too, because I was observing these young men, so I don't say this in a judgmental way.) Interestingly, the home team manages to keep the visiting team's fans segregated in one corner of the stadium. We learned this practice started in the 1970s to minimize violence among opposing fans. This brings me to one of the biggest surprises of this game -- security. I am sure that the security at American games is just as good as at this event. But it sure isn't as visible. And it is certainly not located in the same place. Security at this game, in the form of beefy gentlemen wearing brightly colored jackets, was concentrated behind the south goal -- the exact location of all the Blackburn Rover fans. While the security guards in the rest of the stadium were perhaps 20 feet apart, the gentlemen here were shoulder to shoulder. We asked someone about this and learned that it isn't unusual for visiting fans to try to reach the field or hometeam fans. We were very glad we were seated in the Fulham section as we cheered for the home team. While I enjoyed the game and was impressed with the athletic ability of these men who could run almost non-stop for 90 minutes, I'll keep my jumbotrons, light shows and mascots who could defeat the British Olympic gymnastics team on the floor exercises!