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Common Currency – How To Watch Soccer Overseas

Elizabeth Powley

Screw “Eat, Pray, Love”. The real way to immerse oneself as a single woman into a culture is to know, talk and watch futbol. Preparing for a trip to Rome? Get to know the home teams, Roma and Lazio and their marquee players and notable oddballs. Roma’s captain, for example, Francesco Totti is the club personified having played his entire career there. He is also purportedly not too bright to the point that jokes abound. So much so that they were compiled, in part by Totti himself, and memorialized in a book called “All the Totti Jokes.” But don’t just stick with the Romans. The city is such a melting pot of Italians and others that strong allegiances exist to other teams in the Serie A (the Italian premier league). Fans of Napoli and Juventus can be found within spitting distance.

Next, find your location (or locations) to watch the match (or matches). A piece of advice: in non-English speaking countries, avoid the Irish/English pubs. They tend to be polluted with tourists. This defeats the point of trying to get to know the locals. Ask folks who work the place you are staying; wander around looking for bars with scarves, shirts or other indicia that say futbol is watched here. People wear and display their colors proudly and boldly so it doesn’t take long to find a place. It just might take a while to find the place.

Finally, proceed to watch. There is always something to comment about to get the conversation rolling. Passes, goals, saves, tackles, fouls all serve to provide entrée into a discussion. Introductions flow naturally, rounds of drinks follow suit. But even if you are not watching a game, striking up a conversation with a local is easily accomplished by bringing up a game that is about to be played or one that just was.

Having followed these simple rules you might learn, for example, that the manager of the fanciest hotel bar in all of Rome wears his Juventus jersey underneath his impeccably starched uniform. He fears that his wife, who is a Lazio fan, by the mere fact that she spends more time with his sons, has made them her ally in allegiance. You might also learn that street performers (Sasha, the mime from Montenegro to be precise) make around 600 euros a day. Best of all, though, you’d get to walk around the city with a local, hearing the background of buildings, the ins and outs of the political scene, and best place to get a pizza. And you’d end the night at one of the oldest, most beautiful bars in the oldest quarter. The lingua franca of futbol pays in spades.