Italy vs. Ukraine

So as you may know, I got my first chance to go to a soccer game with a few of my American friends: Susan (in the Purdue shirt below), Catherine (in the picture with me), and Lisa. On a side note, I like how Catherine and Susan tell anyone they know that they picked me up on the street. At dinner one night I asked them if they wanted to go to the game and they said they were already going. So I went ahead and bought a ticket too. They were able to get tickets for 10 euros since they bought theirs ahead of time. I was forced to buy a 43 euro ticket because all the 10 euro ones were sold out. Not a problem because my ticket was on the 3rd row.

So after an afternoon of doing more sightseeing around Rome and unsuccessfully finding a restaurant to cure our Indian curry fix, we headed to the stadium. The game was nothing like I've experienced before. I'm close to saying that the atmosphere is better than going to a Gator game at the Swamp (don't shoot me though fellow gators). The match was between the Italian National Soccer team versus the Ukrainian National Team. It was part of the qualifying round for Euro 2008 (the European only version of the World Cup). Because it was a national team game and the fact that L'Azzurri (Italian Team Nickname "The Blues") are the world champions, the passion of the fans was incredible. Fun fact, the unofficial anthem of AS Roma and more recently L'Azzurri is "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes. So we did the "Bum, ba bum bum bum bum bummmmm" chant over and over again. After a heated match, L'Azzurri came out victorious. I was very proud to be waving my Italian flag high throughout the game. Here are a few pictures from the game: