ring out the warning bell

Before I came to Europe I had two fears: a) get cirrhosis and b) somehow become un-American. Well, the jury is still out on the former, but the latter appears to be occurring. Several weeks ago, to coincide with my time in London, I purchased tickets to an English Premier League match (that’s one of the top flight soccer, ahem, football, league in the world) of fulham versus charlton. After watching the world cup this past summer I decided that I should probably attempt to follow the sport that the entire world watches, so I randomly chose fulham as my team.

Fast forward to yesterday, where I went to Brøndby vis-à-vis FC København. Just to let you know, I have never attended a professional or collegiate American football or basketball game, and whatever other random sports are uniquely American. Yet already I have gone to one European match, and plan on another in a few weeks. Thankfully, because I take Danish, DIS purchased tickets to this game so I attended this game for free. ANYWAY, these two clubs are both located in Copenhagen; with FCK being the centrally located club, and Brøndby residing on the outskirts of town. Their intense rivalry is similar to White Sox and Cubs (assuming that both were in the same league, and both were actually good): one team represents the middle class; the other the upper elites of the city. The two annually contest to be champions of the major Danish soccer league (the Danish Superliga if you're so inclined to know). Being as I hail from Worcester I automatically rooted for the middle class team (Brøndby), and went against the popular notion of my fellow DIS students of (being unoriginal and) rooting for FCK. Personally, I could've cared less about the game's (crap, I mean match's) outcome. But that didn’t stop me from experiencing quite possibly one of the greatest moments of my life. And did I mention that EVERYONE and I started drinking at 2pm?


A popular notion of European Football fans is that they're crazed hooligans. Well, Denmark has Cooligans. That means that they are crazy about their respected teams, but not to the extent that the archetypical soccer fan is (which compared to the US, is still fairly ridiculous). The festivities began around 2pm (the game started at 6pm), with a copious amount of people settling near a massive park directly adjacent to the stadium drinking a copious amount of beer. Needless to say, I partook in said activities.

Well, lets jump ahead several hours and many beers to when I enter the stadium with many other bewildered Americans. I really can’t describe the atmosphere and ambience of attending a large football match in Europe - maybe the Sox/Yankees compare? Our seats were located in the Brøndby family section, practically in the nosebleeds, and the place was still rocking. For the entire 90 minutes of play, the fans were cheering and singing various soccer songs - it was never quiet. You could even hear the FCK fans and their cheers, and they were situated on the opposite end of the stadium! I couldn't understand either team's chants, but I know they said "Ole" a lot.

Unfortunately Brøndby lost 1-0 (at least someone scored), but it didn’t ruin my spirits. And evidently I missed some fans going nuts and throwing seats onto the field and shooting off flares, but alas. As we departed on the trains, we (somehow) got onto the Brøndby train, where they were all singing and jumping around, ON THE TRAIN. My friends had the misfortune of wearing FCK scarves, and were thus shouted at/heckled/sung to in Danish. Oh the times.

So I guess this doesn’t make me un-American, for what isn’t more American than: getting utterly intoxicated at an otherwise totally unacceptable hour of the day; rooting for your home team; and then performing otherwise socially unacceptable boisterous, violent behavior?

Per usual, some photos are embedded throughout. And here is some footage I took on my camera. It gets really shaky at the end and there isn’t any sound, but try and observe the Brøndby fans (they’re in the yellow) and the FCK fans (in the white) going crazy.