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Published: July 13th 2006
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US vs. Ghana
The US team cheers on the crowd after the loss We decided to leave Munich a day early for Nuremburg, the site of the final US first round game which would decide America's fate in the tournament. The guys initially grabbed a seat in a smoking car of the train and ended up staying there because they had found four seats together. I found an empty seat in a smoke free car next door, so I stayed there and read. When we got off the train a couple hours later, Adam said something about Josh getting his own room. Apparently there was a tiff about hotel points for the night and a separate "rough housing" incident between the two on the train didn't help the situation. After some heated discussion in the hotel room Josh left to "find himself another room." In reality, that meant going across the street to get some food for dinner. As tempers cooled and things settled down, we were all over at the Italian restaurant having dinner, apologies were made and Josh was allowed back in the room. My guess is that if I had been involved with the restaurant choice, I would not have picked an Italian restaurant across the street from the hotel. It
turned out that our dinner location would be quite fortuitous for me.
As we were eating some pretty decent pizzas, an American guy named Pedro heard us talking and wished us good luck at the game the next day. We started chatting with him, and it turns out that he worked for FIFA, who was using our hotel as a base in Germany. He was in charge of hospitality for the sponsors. Before he began to head off to eat, he asked if we were all going to the game, and all four of the guys said yes. I would be watching the game from the FanFest. Pedro hesitated for a second when he heard this, and then blurted out "I can get you a ticket...and much better than where they are going to be sitting." I was psyched, especially after I had just heard some poor guy's story about buying three fake England vs. Sweden tickets for 700€ a piece!
The next morning I was to call Pedro in the FIFA suite to find out about the tickets. When we first spoke, he told me that he was surprised at the number of requests for tickets and that at the moment, he was not able to get me one. He told me to give him more time. I walked around town for a few hours, and I ran into him as I was walking back into the hotel. Unfortunately he was still not able to get his hands on a ticket...but...if I were willing to pay for the ticket, he thought he could get me one. He made a phone call, and I could tell that the person on the other line didn't want to break up a pair of tickets. Would I know of someone who could use a second ticket, he asked? I probably knew about five people! I ended up with two category 1 tickets ten rows back right between the goal and midfield. At face value! These tickets could have gone for at least a few hundred Euros a piece on the street. The next question was who would be the lucky friend to get the second ticket.
Our friend Rob was the first in line, as he had asked us to look out for tickets and authorized us to pay up to 250€ for a seat. He was supposed to meet us at our hotel just a few minutes after I got the ticket, but he didn't show up. When we got to the FanFest just outside the stadium, we ran into a fraternity brother who was there with his wife (same guy I ran into in Munich). We told him that if we didn't find Rob by a certain time that the ticket was his. He went off looking for a pair of tickets so that his wife could get in as well. While we were waiting, I ran into an old high school friend, Mason, who is currently playing professional basketball in Naples, Italy. He had come up to meet another high school classmate who was living in Munich, and he was looking for a ticket. Turned out to be his lucky day, since Andrew didn't return by the time we told him we were going in.
The game itself was very exciting. The US scored it's first goal (not counting the goal that Italy scored on themselves) of the tournament. Unfortuneately it would not be enough to beat Ghana and to advance to the next round. The US's group was considered by many to be "the group of death" because of the stiff competition. Out of all eight groups, ours was the only group in which no team had qualified for advancement before the final game. Also, as we now know, we had the eventual champion, Italy, who we had played to a tie with one man down for most of the second half.
I barely remember getting back to the hotel by around 8pm, when I promptly passed out from an afternoon full of beer drinking. I woke up again around 11pm when the guys came back and remember having a hangover already. I finally was up again...at 8am the next morning.
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Cleavon
non-member comment
dude, i can't believe you ran into Mason. is he living in Italy now? guess that goes to show that it's a small world afterall