USA vs. Costa Rica with the Motor City Supporters Club Part I
By: CelticrugbySpectacles, testicles, wallet and watch. The old adage still holds firm as I exit my house en route to meeting up with the Motor City Supporters club. This time, it also includes IPOD and scallycap which one cannot forget especially with a 20 minute drive ahead of them.
Lock, Stock, and IPOD in tow I head for my car as the sun begins to go down. It's the beginning of fall in South Detroit (which doesn't exist except for in a song by Journey) and a select few are all following a relatively same routine and drive to meet up at Claddagh's Irish Pub in Livonia to watch our national team which already qualified for the World Cup courtesy of a 3-2 win in Honduras that left more questions than answers on the field earlier that week.
The week leading up to this one had been fraught with a bit of controversy. The US game was not being broadcast on cable because the Hondurans sold both the English and Spanish rights to a PPV channel.
What made it worse is that its a PPV channel only available en mass at a bar. It's the same rip off Setanta does to Celtic, Rangers, rugby and Gaelic supporters all across North America, except we all know about their ass raping tactics (you pay $10, $20, or even $25 for the game).
This has never happened with our US national team before, so we were of course all up in arms about how this won't essentially be on “free tv” and how its a fucking farce that CONCACAF allows for these rules in the first place.
What most of us don't know is that the US pulled the same shenanigans on Honduras years ago, when the game here was made PPV, so a lot of them (and our fans too) were denied access. So Honduras figured a bit of how's your father back in our faces for scorn years past wouldn't hurt.
This was the main reason I didn't pay 25 bucks to watch the game with the Motor City Supporters club at some Mexican Restaurant the weekend before.
Part of it was principle as in “Fuck you, I'm not paying because this could spark a trend and you would do it more often” and the second part was that I had maybe sixty dollars in my bank account, and I'd rather eat and watch on a stream than pay to watch at a bar.....a bar that I later found out was fulled with maybe 300 Hondurans, about 9/10s more than what the Motor City group brought.
Tonight however was on ESPN2, and I wanted the full bar experience with fans, so there was only one place to be in the mythical South Detroit (really called “downriver).
And so begins the running diary of the USA/Costa Rica Match.
725pm – Jump into the car, trying to find the right music to get fucking pumped for the game...what does one choose? The US kinda lacks songs, other than those composed by Big Honky Deuce spittin' troof from the boof, or old war songs like “Over There”. Social Distortion, that's the ticket. “Angel's Wings” blasts out of my car windows as I pull out of my parking lot and get onto the highway.
730 pm– The song ends, and I figure, I am going to an Irish bar so I might as well blast some of the Celtic punk. “Miss Success” by the Booze Brothers is next up, and I yell out every time they say “Miss Success is a lovely bitch” and think about how this song eerily parallels our national team success. Is it that? Or is it me making way too much out of a song about some elitist girl this French Irish Punk band is singing about.
734pm – You've got to admit, it seems strangely American to be listening to a band from France playing Irish music, as you drive to an Irish pub to watch the United States national team. The Melting Pot / Salad bowl examples come to mind. Would Irish fans be going to an American pub to watch their team? Would French fans go to Irish pubs to watch theirs? Is this dynamic an American experience? Or is it shared by others around the world.
745pm – Driving just above the speed limit (yeah, I need to renew my license) I get to the exit just as “Over there” by Billy Murray starts blaring through the speakers in my car. One more song (Katie at the Races by the Tossers) and I pull up at the pub, pumped the fuck up ready to take on the world and a full Irish Breakfast.
(Yeah, I'm a breakfast at night person).
747pm - I park the car get out, and step into the pub. My new family awaits in the back in our own special room, with TV and control over the remote.
I greet the few guys that are already there (about four) looks like fashionably late is the flavor of the night. Immediately we talk about the Honduras game, how I missed it, how we were outnumbered like 300 to 1 in the bar.
750pm - Being half Bostonian I order some clam chowda (that's right its feckin' chowda we don't need the -er) to start and we get down to business. Who's starting? C'mon ESPN don't keep us waiting.....
755pm – Our room is filling up and the lineups for the US are announced and here's how we line up:
-----------------------Howard
Cherundolo---Onyewu---Bocanegra----Bornstein
Holden----Feilhaber--------Bradley------Donovan
-----------Casey--------------Altidore
756pm – The Chowda has been completely demolished (still not the best in Michigan, for that its Red Coat Tavern) and I begin to write what will be about eight pages of notes on the game.
I'm not drinking because I have no money in my account, so its diet coke (I'm on my second) and I order the same meal that gave us a win last time...the full Irish Breakfast.
We start bemoaning the fact Conor Casey is actually getting another game. I even go so far to say that I'd rather see Brian Ching start than him because he has more to offer (this is a big consolation on my part given Ching's reputation in my US soccer circles).
Casey, or “Gumpy” as I call him doesn't do much...except smash people. A bit of a Lee Mcculloch type where you wonder how the words “footballer” or “soccer player” could ever be associated with them. However the game before he scored twice against Honduras. Which, I knew would be enough to have Bradley keep selecting him, even if we have better talent that needs games (read: Kenny Cooper).
758pm – The teams emerge out of the tunnel and apparently Costa Rica isn't playing the US today, they are playing McDonald's.
At least I won't have to sit through commercials until half..but this is pretty bad.
8pm – Anthems. I always wonder where our anthem ranks in terms of world anthems. I'm not a massive fan of ours, but there are many that are much worse (England's and West Indies Cricket). Rugby anthems put these to shame anyways.
It's also at this point I realize the team aren't wearing black armbands for the woman who died in the accident involving up and coming US striker Charlie Davies the day before. Davies is now out for 6-12 months, and the US fans had already planned tributes to hold cards of his number 9 up for him during the 9th minute of the game (it was at this point he was still going through surgeries, and even now there are many to go).
I still wanted to see our country honor Ashley J. Roberta who died though. When Celtic lost a fan who was hit by a car going to the game on a European night, they wore armbands in his honor, and I thought she at least deserved some sort of remembrance.
But, no. The US messes this up too.
My cousin Jen texts me back. She doesn't get ESPN at her house, so she can't watch her bhoy Holden play. Who the hell doesn't get ESPN these days that has a TV?
The room now has more than 20 people in it, with more filtering in ready with their beer orders before kick off.
The game begins.
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