Women's World Cup

The day after we got back from London we had tickets to go see the Women's World Cup game, New Zealand Vs. Mexico, with our friend Christian.  We've met up with Christian and his girlfriend, Sabrina, a few times.  Shanna works with Christian, and they are both really nice people.  They are German, and Sabrina isn't entirely comfortable speaking English, so it's nice to practice with her.  She practices her English and we practice our German.  Neither Shanna nor I are into soccer, but we both wanted to see a game live since we live here now and soccer is so huge in Europe.

That day, while Shanna was at work, I ran around getting things ready.  I went to the Commissary to get sandwiches for the three of us, as well as ice & drinks for the cooler.  You can't have a proper Soccer experience with out doing some tailgating first. :)  That afternoon I picked both of them up from work and we hit the road.  Sinsheim is only about an hour away, but we were worried about what traffic might be like.  Thankfully there was none, so we got there around 4:45, and the game started at 6:15, so we had time to eat our dinner and tailgate a little.

When it got closer to kickoff time, we started to walk to the Arena.  We weren't sure what to expect in terms of fan turn out since neither team playing is European, but there were a TON of Mexico fans there.

  Rhein-Neckar Arena is relatively new, having been built in 2009.  Since it was so new, we were surprised about how small it was.  We're used to American Football stadiums, where they typically hold between 70,000 - 90,000 people.  This stadium held a max of 25,000 people.  The nice part of that was there weren't really any bad seats.  We got the cheap 30 Euro seats and had a great view.  When we got up to the stadium, Christian had to pick up his tickets from the Will Call booth, so I took the time to snap a few pictures of the Arena.

I was a little disappointed with our seats.  From the diagram where I picked our seats, it made it look like we were picking the two seats closest to the aisle.  In reality, the section we were in merged with the section next to us, so instead of being on the end, we were in the middle, seatwise.  It ended up not being too big a deal, though, since there was plenty of leg room.  Before the game started Christian, who was sitting behind us, took a picture.

The game was a lot of fun.  I've tried watching it on TV, but unless I have a vested interest in a team (like we did with the US during the World Cup last year and the Women's World Cup this year), I just can't get into it.  While I don't have any vested interested in Mexico or New Zealand, that rule doesn't really apply when you go to a live game.  I can get into any sport when you're in a crowd that's going nuts.  Based on people dressed up, it looked like there were more people supporting Mexico.  Mexico was the favored team and scored the first goal fast, less then 2 minutes into the game.  They scored again right before half time and it looked like it was going to be a 2-0 blowout.

The second half was a completely different game.  New Zealand's defense showed up, but their offense was still sputtering.  With 10 minutes left in regulation, it was still 2-0 and people started leaving the stadium.  This game is the reason you NEVER leave before the game ends when a comeback is realistic.  With less then a minute left in regulation, New Zealand scored.  For those not familiar with Soccer rules, when regulation ends, they add "extra" time.  The clock never stops, so when there are penalties or other reasons that would stop a clock in other games, they take note of the length of time, and add it to the end.  So now New Zealand is down 2-1, and they add 2 minutes of extra time on.  With less then 10 seconds left in extra time, New Zealand scores and ties it up.  That's how the game ended, in a tie.  Normally a tie wouldn't be that interesting, but the fact that they scored all their points to tie it with less then 3 minutes left in the game made it interesting.  We found out later that Mexico had to win to advance to the quarter finals round...if they lost or tied, they were out, so with this being a tie, they were going home.

With how excited the New Zealand team & fans were, you'd think they'd won the World Cup.  They were only playing for pride at this point, having lost all their previous games.  After the game was over, as we were filing out, the New Zealand team ran around the stadium waving to everyone, and the New Zealand fans in the crowd went nuts, waving their flag & cheering.

Overall it was a lot fun.  I wish we could have gotten tickets to Germany or the US, but it was still a lot of fun.

We didn't take enough pictures to warrant a full picture page, so click any pictures above to see a higher resolution version.  The next post probably won't be until early August.  There's not much planned until the last week in July when two of our friends, Kimber & Josh, are coming to visit and staying until early August.