World Cup Football (soccer)
 

Will it be easy enough for me to follow Englands games in the world cup whilst in Miami - will places be screening these games or will places be open to screen these games taking into consideration that they are in the early hours of the morning.Can anyone advise me to places to watch these games, sportbars etc..<BR><BR>Thanks for any responses.

Adrian<BR><BR>I am Brit living in the States. Most people here would not understand what the 'Football World Cup' is.<BR>The good news is for the first time ever in the US all world cup matches are going to be shown live. These will be broadcast on ESPN2 channel around 3.00am & 7am. ESPN2 is part of the basic TV cable network package. Just check that your hotel has this channel. Even if bars are not open you can watch it in your hotel room.

I live in Washington, and there are several bars here that will be showing the games live (I'm a little scared of the crowd I'll find at 5:30 a.m. for one of the Ireland matches). I'm assuming the same will be true in Miami. There is a good website that lists all bars in American that show Premiership games, and most of these bars also will be showing the World Cup. Don't have the address on hand, but just do a search.<BR><BR>But don't worry. England will only have 3 matches anyway.

You are right about the people living here having no idea what the World Cup is. There are some though that go nuts about it in the same way I'm sure you do too in your respective countries. I for one was up at 3am and 5am a couple days a week when they played the last one in Japan and Korea. Not big in the states but still fun to watch.

DH tapes every WC game broadcast here and went to EVERY east coast Olympic game when they were here. He's now watching developments re: the WC games in Germany with an eagle eye, but I suspect it's going to be a lot harder to arrange transport, housing, let alone game tickets from over here. There are a few fanatics on this side of the pond, more coming along as the next generation, raised on soccer, moves up.

An oddity is that here soccer has been considered the game of the yuplet -- instead of the working-class sport as just about anywhere else. Most of the US's hypermacho sports nuts think football (American), hockey, and basketball are REAL games while soccer is for the effete upper middle class, one step away from polo. It doesn't help that a lot of the TV coverage here (when there is any) is done by people who really don't know what they're seeing -- they tend to focus on the refereeing and second-guess the ref, rather than actually knowing what's going on on the field (never mind the rules themselves). Often the camera work is also poor, thinking that just following the ball will do it.

(That's a borrow rant from DH, but I know it to be true, having now been immersed in soccer for lo these many years.)

I think you are mistaken about people here not knowing what the World Cup is. You might recall that it was played here several years ago in multiple cities. People do know what it is. They don't care about the outcome, but they at least know what it is!

BTW, if you really need to see a game, the Spanish language networks, like Univision, will probably show more games than ESPN. In fact, it might be worth a watch just to here the famous call of &quot;goooooaaall.....&quot; that can last a good minute.

Didn't even look at the date. I'd imagine Adrian watched the games already!

To make a blank statement that most Americans don't know anything about World Cup is so ludicrous. In 1994 US held the World Cup Tournament. It was the most succesful World Cup in terms of attendance in the history of the tournament. And even more people got really into it after US beat Colombia to earn the right to play Brazil in 1/4 finals. They lost to the eventual champion Brazil in the 1/4 finals after a close game. It was a sign of good things to come. Unfortuately in France in 1998 they were a toral flop. But that got some movement in the US soccer federation. They realized that the old ideas had to go and new ideas and people have to take over. MLS owner/nillioner committed millions to revamp the program. The new coach realized that the young kids have to play abroad to really help them learn. In the US soccer was again becoming more popular. The MLS was/is drawing arond 15K fans average per game. In Japan/Korea US beat Portugal in a shocker. Tied Korea and lost to Poland, but still got out of the group where it beat Mexico only to finally loose to Germany in 1/4 finals again. I remember bars being open at 3am-7am for die hard fans in all the major cities and they were full of fans.
Now many of our youngsters play in the best leagues in the world, English Priemier, German Bundesliga, Dutch, Spanish. The excitment is growing again in anticipation for the WC in Germany in 2 years. There are many fan clubs all over the US.
So please don't say that most Americans don't know what the World Cup is.