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Story time. So I was in London last week. I had a decision to make about whether or not to attend the Man U Arsenal match or go to another function I had previous plans for. I decided to keep my commitment and just watch the Man U match on my phone. I was filled with regret.
Fast forward to Saturday night. I made the decision to go to the Millwall vs. Everton fa cup match. I was completely unprepared for the spectacle that this was. First of all this was the single most expensive sports or theatre ticket I've ever purchased. The lunacy started when I got to the London Bridge train station to get on the train to Millwall. I hear an ungodly den of noise, look behind me and see (really hear) hundreds of Everton fans singing and chanting while surrounded by a two deep wall of London cops. I moved the hell out of the way and just filed in behind the cops and Everton fans. They got several of their own cars on the train.
When we got off of the train station there were dozens of more cops at the station. Everything seemed fine walking to the stadium, the Everton fans had their own way to the stadium, I didn't follow them because I didn't sit in their part of the stadium. Well right before I got in the stadium it seemed like some Everton fans came looking for a fight and they found one. I hear a couple of Millwall fans yell "Millwall" and then something unintelligible. At that point a bunch of Millwall fans started sprinting away from the stadium quickly followed by 6 cops on horses and lots of sirens. Needless to say, I quickly walked my happy ass the opposite direction, to the stadium.
This stadium, The Den, is small, dingy, and old; this perfectly matches the neighborhood it's in. The stadium holds just over 18,000 but the FA lowered the capacity to just under 17,000 for security reasons. Great idea. The game was very fun, pretty similar to my account of my trip to West Ham three years ago. Both groups of fans never stopped making noise although I must say Millwall had the worst chants I've ever heard, they literally did the same two the entire match. One was literally a yell. The yell had the same pitch and timber every time, but the number of times they did it would make the OU marching band blush. When they didn't do that they had a chant about how no one likes them. My though was, how in the hell does anytime even care about Millwall? This is their thing though, nearly all of their souvenirs are tagged with "no one likes us." It's just odd, it would be like the Tampa Bay Rowdies having the same slogan. No one dislikes you, no one really cares.
The game was everything you'd want to see in a fa cup match. 5 goals scored capped by the small club beating the big club with 10 seconds left in stoppage time. The place went absolutely rough ridin' nuts. There was a small pitch invasion, maybe a dozen or so fans who came on when the goal went in. Then, despite the fact that there were literally hundreds of security officers and cops on the pitch, including a couple of dozen riot cops with dogs, there was a larger pitch invasion at the final whistle. None of these people got arrested, they were ask just led back to the stands which led to some going out more than once.
As I left the stadium I noticed probably a hundred more cops on the street to the train station and in addition to this there were 18 twelve passenger vans on the street all completely full with cops in riot gear just sitting there ready to come out then things popped off. The walk and train ride back to downtown London was uneventful but loud with Millwall fans doing that dumb yell the whole time.
Long story short, I'm glad I picked the Millwall game instead of man u because it was the better game and more importantly I wouldn't have had an apparently needed police escort, nor no way of getting a ticket from man u, so I very well may have been literally killed by Arsenal fans. English soccer is literally insane, for better or worse, there is no comparison with American sports.