Camacho Watcho

An unfortunate day for Uruguayan futbol on Sunday…they tied against Chile on this beautiful day, although it was not without a fight. My friends and I went to another soccer game, sporting our baby blue. The games are just so much fun! I’ve decided, based on this last experience, that there seem to be two certainties in Uruguayan life.

1. It is always a beautiful day when Uruguay soccer is played.
2. Uruguayans are late for everything….except a soccer game.

I arrived with a friend a couple minutes before the game, thinking that since we had tickets in a pretty good section, it would be easy to find our seats before the game started. I was very wrong. The stadium, while historic and very amazing, is not the highest tech stadiums out there and is very poorly marked. And everyone was there and had been there, anxiously awaiting the game, for awhile. We found ourselves there right as they were singing the national anthems, so we were in a scrabble to find our friends and have a seat. We found, what we thought was the right set of stairs to descend, although it was tough to identify it as stairs at all. Apparently, there is no order to soccer games and no one really cares where people sit. So, while this was a stairway we had found, it was completely filled with fans sitting on the steps. We were, however, fairly determined this was right, so we made our way down, trying to be as polite as possible along the way. When we reached the very bottom, we realized….wrong stairway…and we were trapped. There was no going back up and there was definitely no going down further. So, for the first half of the game, we were sitting on the steps with the masses in the front row of the middle bowl. The “seats” were not as good as what we had paid for, but the experience was definitely more interesting. Although we did move at halftime to sit with our friends, the first half was a lot of fun!

So, the action on the field….Chile is a better team than Bolivia, as you can tell by the score of the game, and the game seemed pretty evenly matched in the first half. There were a couple missed opportunities by Uruguay, which were major disappointments, but near the end of the first half, Uruguay did score and it was wild! The game was much more crowded this time and people were jumping up and down and going crazy…chanting of course…Uruguay (clap clap clap) Uruguay (clap clap clap). I just loved it! The second half started similarly to the first, but then Chile managed to score and shortly thereafter scored again on a penalty kick. This really fired up Uruguay and they were full out, charging down the field with several close goal attempts until, finally….SCORE!!! All tied up. I knew the end of the game was nearing, although I had no idea when, since this stadium has neither a scoreboard or clock. This was frustrating at first, but then you get into it, and given that you have no idea when the final seconds will wind down, it really adds to the drama of the game. As the players are charging up, so are you, since the game could end literally at any moment. The game continued in this battle, charged up until the last moment, until it unfortunately ended in a tie.

So Uruguay will play Chile away soon, and while not all hope is lost, it’s more difficult to come back when you’ve lost the first game at home. At least that’s what I’m told…remember, this is only my second soccer game ever. I guess, that’s not counting the soccer games I “played” in one summer when my mom decided it would be a good idea to sign me up for a team when I was a kid. I obviously did not retain much of that knowledge, but not all was last that summer, I did perfect my pirouette while idly awaiting the ball to come my way.

Posted on November 19th, 2007 by katiejocannon
Filed under: Chile, Entertainment, Uruguay