In 2012, making the most of the media accreditation UEFA had given me, I attended 10 Euro matches, one in Poland (the inaugural game between the hosts and “us”, Greece), and nine in Ukraine, moving from one city to another every second day, taking trains (excluding a bus ride from Warsaw to Lviv). It was easy, inexpensive, and allowed me to go to many games, including a semifinal in Donetsk, and the final in Kyiv.
Two years later, in Brazil, I had a newspaper paying for my expenses, so I went to 14 matches, taking many night buses, and even some flights. After attending three games in the first four days in São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, I flew to the Northeast, to attend seven more games, in Natal, Fortaleza, Recife and Salvador da Bahia. Next, flight to Brasília, for the Argentina vs Belgium quarterfinal, and then back to buses to watch both semis in Belo Horizonte and São Paulo, and the final at Maracanã. Did it, I’d do it all over again, but it was exhausting, it really was.
With the AFC having approved my 2015 Asian Cup media accreditation request, I had to decide on an itinerary. Money was an issue, plus, I kept telling myself I had to learn from 2014, I had to avoid going to extremes, moving around-wise. After… studying the schedule, I chose to break the competition in three parts (minimizing moving from one place to another), basing myself in a city at a time; Melbourne for the first three matches, Brisbane for the next three, Sydney and nearby Newcastle for the last four, including both semifinals and the final (take a look at the bottom of the post to see exactly which games I attended).
I had been to Australia before (thrice, actually; twice in 2004, and then again in 2008), I loved it, I had even tried to settle down there (in 2004, failing B I G), so to be in one of my top favorite countries, summertime, holding a media accreditation for a major football tournament, it really was a dreamy situation for me. Plus, my preferred team, the Aussies, won it, with a Greek-Australian (Ange Postecoglou) leading them from the bench, so my Greek vanity was well-served.
Attendances were impressive. Both Australians of European descent and communities with ancestry from Asian countries followed the competition closely. For me, as a football fanatic, seeing Australians get behind their national team from the very start of the tournament, not only after starting winning, was a real joy. I had been to Aussie Rules football games in 2004, had really enjoyed it, but that wasn’t… “my” football. Seeing stadia full for “my” football matches, made me love the country even more.
Truth be written though, four years later, looking back at the 10 games I attended then, I find it super easy to give my “top favorite fans” award to… (let the drums roll…) the Iranians (more in Melbourne, in their team’s 2-0 win over Bahrain, less in Brisbane, in their 1-0 victory over the UAE). Despite holding a media accreditation, I watched most of the game at Melbourne’s “Rectangular Stadium” seated among the Iranian fans, and saw things I had never seen before in a football stadium, and haven’t seen since either. It felt like a party, or maybe a wedding, any occasion in which people gather up to play the music and dance. If the party took a break for a few seconds, someone would stand up, clap, shout something, and just like that, from one second to another, as if someone had pushed an invisible button, a whole stand would be on their feet, mostly dancing, shaking their bodies, something I had never associated with any football stadium before, but yes, with night music venues in Greece, with people dancing on tables...
I had met Iranians before, in other countries, I had always felt close to them probably because the ancient name of their country (Persia) is a regular in Greek history books, but I hadn’t been in Iran (still haven’t), had never watched football there, and when I did watch an Iranian team play, it was in Seoul (Esteghlal, AFC Champions League, September 2013), and the Iranians on the stands were super-super few, hardly any. To write that I was left "impressed" by them in Melbourne, would be a poor-poor understatement.
Detail: Iranian women looked absolutely gor-ge-ous… Their looks, their body moves (as if dancing at a wedding) their “air”, their sex appeal, their… every-every-everything, made me half admire them and half feel sorry for the women back in Iran. The latter, because I kept thinking that if that game against Bahrain was not being held in Melbourne, but in Tehran, things on the stands for the female football fans would be indescribably different(…).
The Asian Cup in Australia was also a chance for me to “discover” players I had never really heard of before, and if I had, I hadn’t really paid close-close attention. No one impressed me more than the UAE’s Omar Abdulrahman, a guy I would happily pay a ticket to watch play. His “out of the box” way of thinking made him stick out. The fact that he’s out of this year’s Asian Cup due to his October injury, sucks.
The Aussies’ win over Korea Republic in the final, at a packed Stadium Australia, was the perfect cherry on top. Before leaving the country, I returned to my beloved Melbourne for a few more days, and finally-finally-finally, caught a cricket game at the MCG, which, in my book, is up there with watching football at Maracanã, or baseball at the old (demolished in 2009, I think) Yankee Stadium. To be honest, until 2015, I felt cricket was the most boring sport to be played on the face of this planet. My Sri Lankan-Australian friend in Melbourne had tried before to convince me otherwise, but I just wouldn’t listen. In 2015, I had an… epiphany; I took a real interest in the rules, understanding how things work. Before I knew it, I was watching one Big Bash game after another on TV, getting more and more tempted to go watch a game at the cricket temple, the MCG. I finally did, partly because I knew that was my last chance; for some reason, I feel I’ll never go back to Australia, no matter how much I still love the country.
(Games attended abroad) 168 – 177
168 Australia-Kuwait 4-1, Melbourne, Australia, 2015, January 9
169 Iran-Bahrain 2-0, Melbourne, Australia, 2015, January 11
170 Korea DPR-Saudi Arabia 1-4, Melbourne, Australia, 2015, January 14
171 Iraq-Japan 0-1, Brisbane, Australia, 2015, January 16
172 Australia-Korea Republic 0-1, Brisbane, Australia, 2015, January 17
173 Iran-UAE 1-0, Brisbane, Australia, 2015, January 19
174 Japan-UAE 1-1 (the UAE won on penalties), Sydney, Australia, January 23
175 Korea Republic-Iraq 2-0, Sydney, Australia, January 26
176 Australia-UAE 2-0, Newcastle, Australia, January 27
177 Korea Republic-Australia 1-2, Sydney, Australia, January 31
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