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Shock the World!!
Suwon, South Korea - Things couldn't have started out worse for my World Cup trip (or so I thought). Five minutes left on my last day of work before I leave for Korea and someone knocks down my Landon Donovan bobblehead smashing it to pieces. That can't be good, I thought....I hope someone isn't trying to tell me something. Luckily a friend from work glued Humpty Landon back together again before the Cup started to avoid the bad karma of having him in pieces. I left from JFK Airport on June 3rd. 14 hours (and a day later) I arrived in Korea. I was suppose to meet a friend at the airport, but thats a whole other story. Thanks to some **great information from the info booth I took a 3 hour journey to get to Suwon, where the first US game was to be played. Instead of simply hopping on a bus at the airport and going directly to Suwon....I had to take a bus to a subway stop and then make three transfers to get to Suwon. Not very easy when you have all your luggage. When I finally made it to my room, I just collapsed.
The stadium was incredible. Our seats were in the upper mezzaine. After arguing with the Korean Stewards for a few minutes, I finally hung up all the banners. The fans started to filter in and the game was about to begin. At first, I was disappointed with the fan turn out. It looked like there was not going to be many voicerofous people in Korea.
Going completely nuts for that incredible first half, I needed to get a drink at half-time. I ran into Joe and he said that the stewards weren't checking stubs and that group had formed up in the middle behind the goal. Brent, Sansone, myself and a few others grabbed the Baby Flag and we all went down behind the goal.That's where all the real fans were! For the second half we sang, we shouted and we prayed. When the final whistle blew, we went nuts, the team went nuts....we had just beaten Portugal. We left the stadium singing and went to celebrate the rest of the nite. No longer would we be a 250 to 1 shot to win the World Cup. Next stop: Seoul.
Ed Kirwan
Pics
**Asteriks at the end of a descripition denotes a contributed photo. Photos have been contributed from Yellow Card Journalism with their permission. Look in the status bar for the name of the photograper.
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The next day I met up with my friend Crystal from Taiwan and we toured the city. Suwon is famous for its historical Hwaseong Fortress that once guarded the city from Japanese invasion in the 18th century. After touring the city, we made our way to the stadium for the big game vs Portugual. We got there pretty early. I wanted to make sure I got past security with no problems and could scope out our seats. It took them a few minutes to search me but I got in fine and I was relieved to finally be able to put down the Baby Flag bag. I didn't just bring the Baby Flag, I also had our familiar NJB banner, an American Flag and a special World Cup banner made by a group of high schoolers from MA.
Having Brent and Sansone in the section made me feel at least a little better knowing that I wasn't going to be the only crazy die hard there. Then the game started. AND what a game it was. Best half of soccer I have ever witnessed.
We must have stayed in that stadium for another 30 minutes after the game singing and cheering. I was too busy taking part to even snap off any pictures of the celebration. I will never forget the chants of " da da da da Figo Sucks," "Overrated" and "Where's your Figo now?"
