FC Porto Futbol

Sunday night we had the opportunity to go to our first ever European Futbol game.  I think I was more excited than Andy seeing that I played soccer growing up and have always wanted to go to a European game.  I think it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. We were both pretty tired coming off our Barcelona weekend, but we got showered up and thought we'd leave extra early so we could check out the stadium.  We got tickets from a guy Andy works with who owns a box, so had a parking pass and a map of exactly where to go.  Once we got to the stadium premise, you could feel the excitement in the air.  There were people walking from all different side streets dressed in their FC Porto gear.

As we entered the tunnel that took us around the stadium to our garage we immediately came to a stand still.  Seeing that we are still unsure of the "normalicies" here, we sat and sat and sat.  As time went on people started to get really frustrated and started honking their horns.  This went on for about a good 30 minutes and we literally did NOT move.  Talk about slightly clasterphobic in a tunnel.  As mentioned we were not sure if this was the norm seeing that futbol is such a HUGE part of the culture here.  

Kickoff came and went and we still were poking along.  Finally after getting to our tunnel we hurried inside and got into the box 15 minutes late.  The stadium was roaring and you could feel the energy.  FC Porto was playing Sporting Lisbon, so it was a huge rival game.  A few highlights of the experience and photos below.

- The reason why we had to wait to get in the parking garage was because the Lisbon fans had blocked all the entrances to the garages so the Porto fans could not get into the game.  There were police vehicles EVERYWHERE and they had to majorly intervene to get the fans out of the way so the Porto fans could proceed with parking.  Pretty hilarious that they thought of doing this and made thousands of people late to the game.

- We had the luxury of sitting in a box, so our parking ticket was for one spot specifically which was right underneath the box, so we literally parked and walked up a few flights of stairs to the box.  Nice way to experience the game.

- They do not drink during the games, or have food/drinks in the boxes.  But they do smoke. Yuck.

- FC Porto has a section that is filled with over 1,000+ fans that do not sit the entire game, rather wave flags and chant profanities at the other team.  

- They serve a sit-down dinner at halftime where you have a designated table that you sit at.  They have a large buffet style meal with wait staff that serves drinks during the 20 minute half.  People literally run down at half, chow-down and then scurry back up to their box.  This is special to the club level.

- You do not have to go through any type of security to enter the stadium.  No purse checks, nothing?? Not sure if that was only for our level, but would think it would be standard stadium guidelines regardless where you sit?

- Sporting Lisbon's fans were loud.  Like really loud.  When they scored their only goal of the game, they went crazy and shot off road flares in the middle of their sections.  They were super loud and filled the air with smoke.  I'm sure the Porto police had had it with them at this point.  We found their loyalty very entertaining between the blocking of the parking garages to the road flares in the stadium.

Here is a video of a few captions I took throughout the game when Porto scored and Lisbon scored.  The crowd was INTENSE!  Sorry it gets a little rocky at the end.