Rangers vs. Milan

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend the football friendly Rangers versus AC Milan. On top of that here is where things get real interesting and exciting. Walking up to the stadium (in the snow) with a couple of guys from my hall who were also going there seemed to be this air of excitement about the match, and the general buzz was that people wanted to see the stars of the Rosseneri. Upon picking up my ticket and being asked to tell them my address for proof, the lady chuckled a little bit and said "Arizona huh" when she handed me my ticket, we found our way to our respective gates and entered. Being by myself now, I wandered around looking for seat 0218 in area SW2, thinking that it must be in the upper deck. However following the signs that showed where my seat number is, I ended up standing at the top of the lower section and knowing that I had row C, looked down at the steps to see just how high up I would be. At this point, a revelation of sorts came over me, and I suddenly realized that I was be going to be very, very, very close to the action down on the pitch. As it turns out, that very, very, very close was the SECOND ROW in the entire stadium!

Now for the action on the field, Milan trotted out some of their stars in the first half, aka Ronaldinho, Beckham, Shevchenko, etc. Seeing these guys up close is unbelievable, first off, Beckham's passing is a thing of beauty, every ball goes exactly where he wants it to and during his time playing I cannot remember him losing the ball once. Ronaldinho has the quickest feet that I have ever seen in person, and watching him dance over the ball right in front of me made my jaw drop. The first half came and went with nothing really exciting happening (except that I got a couple of great shots on my camera of Clarence Seedorf warming up, since he decided to do on the sideline right in front of me). At halftime, Milan had all of their substitutes out on the field running around getting loosened up, and the lady next to me kept taking pictures of one guy in general. Now, having never seen Kaka in person, I figured that he was not very tall and very big, because he does not look that way on TV. I kept thinking to myself, "why is she taking pictures of one guy? He runs goofy, looks uncoordinated" and then kind of laughed it off as maybe he played for Rangers before joining Milan. How dumb did I feel when he peels off his warm-ups to go into the game and it turns out to be Kaka, only one of the top 3 footballers (yes, that is what it is called) in the world. Made me eat my own words. So in the second half, Kaka, Pato (more on him later), Seedorf all check in for Milan within the first 10-15 minutes and DaMarcus Beasley checks in for Rangers. Nothing brings more national pride to a US soccer fan than seeing a homegrown talent such as Beasley score a goal against a great team (Milan). This was the best thing for the match, since Milan now decided to wake up and actually play some inspiring football. 

Pato and Kaka are amazing. Period, end of discussion. Pato does not run on the field, it seems like he just kind of hops around and floats to wherever he needs to go and does something amazing along the way. Well soon after Beasley scores, Kaka gets the ball in front of me and just absolutely terrorizes the poor right back for Rangers and breaks in for goal, lays it back across the middle where it hits a Rangers defender, bounces off of another Rangers defender, and goes right to Pato who taps it into the net in less than 5 minutes after coming onto the pitch. The entire second half I was treated to Kaka, Pato, and Seedorf deciding to strut their stuff against a vastly overmatched right side of the field for Rangers. Rangers scored again off of a nice combination, but the real highlight of the match was an absolute laser by Kaka in roughly the 80th minute. Now I am going to try and put myself in the Rangers defender's position: 

"oh look Kaka is dribbling the ball at goal from about 30 yards out,  maybe I should step up to him and make him pass the ball off... nah its Kaka he wont do anything, he is not that good... oh look he is only 20 yards out now, should I step to him now? Nah, its Kaka, he's not that..."

and just like that the match was tied 2-2 which is where it ended. All in all, it was an amazing experience, and getting the chance to watch these guys up close really shows how TV does not do justice for the beautiful sport.