Game of Scones: Football & Banksy

This past Saturday was the Champions League football final between England’s Chelsea and Germany’s Bayern Munich. I don’t go out of my way to watch football games over here, but whenever there is a big one on, they are hard to miss. Either the pubs all over London are showing them or one of my flatmates is watching in the kitchen.

What I’ve learned over here is that there are multiple football leagues and the best way for me to describe them is by depicting an onion. An onion has multiple layers almost like the leagues here. There are multiple leagues in England and there are in some ranking order. Obviously, the most famous one is the Premier League, which has teams like Chelsea, Arsenal, Fulham, and Liverpool. These are the big names. Under the Premier League are like tons of other leagues, but go down in descending order on how good they are. The Football League Championship is ‘Level 2’ and then Football League One is ‘Level 3.’ Under that it goes Football league Two, Conference National, and then all the way down to Northern Premier League Premier which is the worst league. This is super confusing since I never know which team is in what league or which league is better than another. Obviously, this system is more complicated than back at home where in American football we just have the AFC and NFC or in baseball when we have the American League and the National League.

To make matters worse/more complicated, each team is never really safe in their league. Every year, they not only compete to win their league, but to either move up a league or remain in their league. For example, the bottom three teams of the season from the Premier League are demoted down to the Football League Championship. For the Football League Championship, the top three teams are promoted up to the Premier League and the bottom three are demoted down to the Football League One. This ‘top three’ and ‘bottom three’ is approximately the same for all 8 leagues. I guess all this movement makes each season new and exciting because you get to play new teams each year and its always stressful since you never know where you’ll be.

By the way, those leagues I just talked about are just for England. The game I watched on Saturday night was the Champions League, which is a league for all the teams in Europe. I am not sure how the teams get chosen to play in the finals, but this year it was Chelsea versus Munich. Ironically, Chelsea didn’t win the Premier League title (Man City did) so I really have no idea how they got to the Champions League.

I wouldn’t have even known about this game if it weren’t for Oren having a mini-watching party in our kitchen. I went in to make dinner and suddenly the whole KCL hockey team was there, so I decided to stick around and watch the game with them. The game was exhilarating and it was hilarious hearing the guys screaming at the screen. No one really like Chelsea, so it was basically a lot of screaming of “wankers” and other curses I will refrain from writing.

Basically, Chelsea is known to be that team that plays awful for most of the game and then suddenly scores in the last 5 minutes to win the game. Everyone hates it and everyone recognizes it. Throughout the game Munich was outrunning and having more shots on goal. It was 0-0 up to the 75’ mark when Munich finally scored. Everyone was cheering and they thought that would be the game. Well lo-and-behold around the 85’ mark Chelsea scored some crappy goal to tie it up. The boys were furious and were even angrier due to the fact that they would now need to watch overtime. “If they would’ve only just let Munich win!” 30 minutes of overtime later, it was still 1-1, which meant penalty kicks. The boys were literally furious and were sure that ‘Chelsea being Chelsea’ would some how win even though they deserved to be crushed 4-1. Anyways, Munich scores first on the penalty kicks and Chelsea misses. In the second to last penalty kick, Chelsea gets it in and Munich misses, making them TIED AGAIN IN PENALTY KICKS. So basically it came down to the final penalty kick for both sides. Everyone was screaming “Typical Chelsea.” Well, the Munich kicker got cocky, tried to do a fancy kick, and hits the post! With the last kick, the Chelsea player scores and wins the League.

[Side note: The Munich took a penalty kick and got it in! That is almost like a field hockey goalie taking a stroke and scoring. It is almost unheard of and I was so proud for that goalie!]

Let’s just say no English people were happy. But all the Americans on my news feed were there most excited. Goes to show how no British people never really support the big teams.

Anyways, throughout the game I was amazed/stupefied by the football talk going around me. Almost every guy in England can name each player on each team and their manager. Like, there were continuous arguments about this guy being traded and this manager getting fired. Yes, Americans know other players on other teams, but keep in mind there are around 5x more teams in England for football. Also, I don’t know exactly how trading works here in England, but I don’t think players have such long contracts to teams, so they are traded pretty often.

A lot of the boys were Tottenham fans and supposedly had to route against Chelsea because if they lost then they would never get this player, or that manager, or that player would leave the team. Whatever, it was just super stressful in that there is so much to worry about since no player is ever really tied down to a team. Also, in football, team coaches are fired more readily than at home, so they kept on talking who was going and staying. Lastly, betting is huge here, so a lot of guys lost a lot of money on this game!

Chelsea: Champions League Champions

This is a random thought, but it has to do with football. So, Americans always support our soccer teams, especially during the Olympics. What we don’t know is that we aren’t playing against the other countries’ best players. Over each summer is the Euro Cup, which is basically like the FIFA World Cup, but for just Europe. The Euro Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics for Europe and this is where they send all their best players. That being said, since the English National Team will be playing in the Euro Cup, they will not be playing in the Olympics. The National Team will not be supporting their nation. And this is for all of Europe. So when we loose to these teams like Spain and Germany, American soccer should be embarrassed since we are loosing against their backups.

Moreover, since no one really cares about football in the Olympics, there are still Olympic tickets for the English football games! HA! No one even wanted to pay for them!

Watching football in the UK has really been enjoyable. I felt so damn British watching the game with Oren's friends and cheering on teams. I understand the game more and feel some more connections to teams. I understand why it isn't big in America too. It is not a high scoring game, not the quickest game, and there aren't a lot of fights. But man...when a game is on and you walk by a pub that is literally overfilling with fans holding a pint...THAT's the life. That being said, never try to go to a bar or pub on a game night. It is super awkward when you walk in and there are no seats and everyone's eyes are fixated on the screen.

[Side note: One of Oren's friends was literally the most British thing I had ever met. He had the most posh accent and was so proper. He is from Suffolk and when I asked him to describe the place in three words he said "farms, wealthy,.....very wealthy. His father WENT TO THE ROYAL WEDDING AND MET KATE. And his family has a crest...WHATTT? Things like this still exist.]

Earlier that day, I took a study break by finding the new Banksy art in London. I went on a Banksy scavenger hunt earlier on in the term, but this piece was literally done over the weekend. The graffiti went up Thursday and immediately hit the news. Zach and I went to find it and when we did, it already had been covered by plastic protecting it from the crowds. It is truly amazing how Banksy gets away unnoticed since he does his art in such public places. Like, you’ll see in the pictures below, the graffiti is right off a main road ON a busy store.

The graffiti done by Banksy is depicting a young sweatshop worker bent over a sewing machine. Everyone keeps on saying it is ‘just in time for the Diamond Jubilee’ as if Baksy did this as a message to the Queen. Out of the graffitied sewing machine is real Union Jack bunting that goes across the wall. Most of it has been removed so it can be kept under Plexiglas, but some still remains. After Zach and I saw it, we went into the Poundland store in which the graffiti is drawn on and saw that the store was selling the same bunting! That means Banksy probably walked into the store, bought some bunting, and then directly graffitied it onto the wall! Amazing!