The Average Joe is just back from a long Memorial Day weekend in the great city of Chicago, where an invading army of English blokes got to see their national soccer team beat the US 2-1. It was a great time, but I sure wish the Americans were in the game a little more to keep the drunken taunts of the English to a minimum.  Sadly, that was not the case.

I expected to see a lot of English guys at the game, but my lord, there were a ton of them.  Where the hell did all these people come from?  There were English dudes on my flights to Chicago, at the airport, at every train station I passed, on every train I rode, in every pub I went to (of course), and the stadium was crawling with them.  They were everywhere.  And the English attitude was largely what I expected – arrogant.  Soccer is their game after all, and for us Americans to even dare to face them seemed to be a personal affront to them.  Never mind that very few Americans I saw were going on about how the Yanks were going to beat the redcoats again.  The English were letting everyone near them know what was going to happen that day, loudly and drunkenly.

Props to the city of Chicago for allowing, or at least turning a blind eye to, excessive drinking on the Meta train.  All the trains I rode into the city were like a rolling party, and every car had at least one group with a styrofoam cooler full of beer.  Between the England fans drinking Guinness, Bass and Newcastle and the Cubs fans drinking Old Style and Budweiser, it wasn’t hard to find a free beer.  There was a great mood, and some light taunting between baseball fans and soccer fans, which was a shock to the English, who aren’t used to having their national game laughed at.

The pub scene, as you might imagine, was absolutely crawling with English.  Getting to the bar was no small feat, and keeping your beer cup full became a full-scale task.  I eventually resorted to double-fisting it, which is good for keeping your beer supply up, but bad if you think somebody might take a swing at you, which was in question a time or two.  All in all, I didn’t see any serious confrontations.

It’s said that England and America are two countries separated by a common language, and that couldn’t be more true.  The English even curse differently than we do.  When’s the last time you heard someone get told to sod off?  And they have this common inflection that happens when they get agitated, when their voice raises an octave or two and, depending on the thickness of their accent, it gets really hard to understand a word some of them are saying. 

As for the game itself, Soldier Field was packed almost to the rafters.  I’d say there were probably as many Americans as English, but the English were louder and more boisterous, except for when the Americans scored.  Then the home folks showed that we could make some noise, too.  Unfortunately, that didn’t occur until late.  England went up 1-0 in only the fourth minute on a beautiful free kick by rookie Kieran Richardson.  There was nothing the defense or goalkeeper could do about the perfectly placed ball.  Just like that it was 1-0, and the English were really feeling their oats.  Luckily I was as drunk as they were, so I didn’t understand half of the insults tossed my way. 

The American defense fell apart late in the first half, and Richardson got himself another goal to put England up 2-0.  I was in the club seating at Soldier Field’s second level, so there was an actual bar, not just a beer stand, right behind my seat.  So halftime was spent much like the hours leading up to the game, drinking at a bra and getting harassed by other drunks.  This time, though, they had a 2-0 lead and I was running out of credible defenses. 

The Americans controlled play for much of the second half, and we finally put one in the net in the 79th minute, but it was too little, too late.  At least we didn’t get blanked.  While the English prattled on about how they beat us with their second team, most of them didn’t realize that fully half of the American starting lineup was out too.  After the game, I had to listen to brash taunts about how all the English guys were going to shag American birds that night.  It was like I was in a scene from Austin Powers.  I didn’t think people actually talked like that, but some do.  All in all, it was a great trip, one I’d do over in a heartbeat.