After Saturday, I was pretty tired but another one of my teammates invited me and my roommate Lindsay to go see a soccer game with her family (or football as they say over here) the next day. One of the things that I love about this team was that they are so welcoming and included us new players right from the beginning. We were just a couple weeks in and they were already inviting me to go hang out with them outside of the gym! Especially in a place that is so new, having teammates to go check out the city is super fun.
Our first challenge was that we had to somehow get to Bern, which is half an hour away from Marin. Luckily Sara is super experienced with taking the train so she let us know when we should get on the train in Marin. We ended up meeting her in Bern and we all headed to the soccer stadium together. On the walk over she filled us in on the teams for the upcoming match. BSC Young Boys (yes that is their actual name!) is the team from Bern and are currently second in the league. They are yellow and black just like a bumblebee so everyone was wearing those colors on our train ride into Bern. The opposing team was FC Thun who is first in the league. They were red and white and from a close town up in the mountains. Sara was telling me that was a huge rival game because the towns are so close! She also said that they game was almost sold out, so I knew that was going to be a fun game to watch!
We arrived a bit early to the game but you could tell that one section of fans were the die hard fans because they had flags and were already practicing their cheers! This was my first professional soccer game that I had been to so I was curious how the fans would be as. Sara is from around Bern and has been a Young Boy's fan for a long time so naturally that's who we rooted for and wanted to win!
This is the stadium from the outside. Just like where I practice, they have mall and grocery store in the bottom of the stadium.
The section of the die hard fans before the game started!
The game began and it was cool to watch the game but it was also cool to see how the fans reacted to every little detail! They would get mad if someone on their team made a silly mistake or if an opposing player should have gotten a penalty card. I think I almost had more fun watching the reaction of the fans than the actual game. I think the group of fans that I liked watching the most were the super fans! They constantly were shouting out cheers and there was one man who would start all the cheers! He actually wasn't even watching the game because he had his back to the field. It reminded me a lot of our "spike squad" section back at Illinois that had a cheer for every player and would get mad at the refs for missing a call.
The guy who was instructing the different cheers and songs to the huge group of fans!
Can you find where the guy is in this picture??
Lindsay, Myself and Sara enjoying the game
Definitely got a lot more crowded once the game began!
Here is a short video of the match!
At first the game was tied 0-0 but then one of the young boy player's got a yellow card inside of the goalie box (not super sure if this is the right way to say it because I've never played soccer competitively before) so Thun got to have a penalty kick and unfortunately they scored. We were down 0-1 for almost the entire game until the end. A player scored against our goalie and then went right up to the fan section and starting making hand gestures like bring it on. That got the young boys fans super upset and angry! Some fans jumped over the side of the railing to get to closer to the field and where shaking the barricades blocking them from actually entering. And people higher up threw plastic cups and plates right on the field! I've never seen so many people upset but it was actually very entertaining to watch. The game ended shortly after with Young Boys losing 0-2. And although they lost, it was still a lot of fun! Hopefully we will be able to go to another game this season.
Sounds like fun!
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