August 19th

SK Wien v Aston Villa

Villa Scores in the 12 minute

Rapid Wien Free Kick close to goal

Today was my first experience witnessing a European football (soccer) match live. The team from Vienna is known as SK Rapid and they play their home matches at the Gerhard Hanappi Stadium in the 14^th district of Vienna known as Penzing. SportKlub Wien has 32 championships to their name including one German Bundesliga title in 1941 because of the Anschluss with Hitler in 1938, making Austria apart of Germany.  They were playing Aston Villa, a team from the English Premier League. It was a Europa League cup, with this being the first leg. The final score was 1-1; therefore if SK Wien goes to England and beats Aston Villa outright, they will advance to the next round. However if no one were to score in that next game, Aston Villa would knock out SK Wien out of the tournament because they scored more away goals. We headed to the stadium early around 4pm, because kickoff wasn’t until 6:45pm. The game had been sold out since Monday so we decided we would try to see if anyone was selling tickets to this important match. Everyone that was selling tickets however was only selling their tickets for 50 euro and most people only had 1 extra ticket. It was much more different when compared to the states though because when you go to a sporting event in the states, the ticket scalpers make themselves known to their clientele. There were really no sign of scalpers outside of the stadium so our plan was not gonna work. Martha, Misha, Sam, and myself just finally walked up to the ticket window and asked if we could buy tickets right before kickoff, because usually when people don’t show up to claim their tickets they are usually just sold. They said we could indeed buy tickets. So what we ended up doing was going and buying tickets for 18 euro from the visiting ticket window where fans from Aston Villa sat during the match since football (soccer) fans are segregated in stadiums to cut down on violence. The atmosphere was electric though as 17,000 packed into the stadium to support SK Wien. Sam who isn’t even a soccer fan was completely blown away by the atmosphere generated by the SK Wien faithful It’s amazing when 17,000 SK Wien fans raised their green and white scarves in unison and just cheered for their beloved team nonstop from beginning to end. During the game the few hundred Villa fans instigated shouting matches in between the fenced off area. I was completely shocked when I heard individuals referring to the Vienna fans as Adolph or Nazis. It was really disrespectful and uncalled for but for English soccer fans, everything is fair game. They even had a chant about German bombers being shot down in World War II, which was 70 years ago, but I guess they felt they had to bring up events those events to stick it to the SK Wien fans. The SK Wien fans weren’t so pleasant themselves though. In the second half they began to throw objects at the American goalkeeper for Villa, Brad Guzan. They were throwing drinks onto the field, and small objects like lighters and coins. Brad Guzan immediately ran to the referee to ask him to intervene. He stopped play for a few seconds but it is not the referee’s job to supervise the behavior of 17,000 people when he is tasked with looking after the 22 players on the field battling tooth and nail for the win. UEFA, the governing body of the Europa League tournament, is investigating the incident and will use Brad Guzan’s testimony to possibly hand down financial penalties to SK Wien and their fans. After the match the Villa captain, Nigel Reo-Coker gave his game jersey to a Villa supporter who was in the front row. He then proceeded to walk right by the Vienna supporters right behind the goal and gave them an obscene gesture with his middle finger. Lets just say he didn’t get a warm reception form the Rapid fans. After the game was over, we had to wait to be let out of the stadium. Unlike sports in the States, people have been crushed to death because of stampedes and have died as a result from angry rival fans. Therefore crowd control is key after a big Europa league just for those precautionary reasons. Being the huge soccer fan that I am, I felt very fortunate to get into the match for 18 euro and it was truly an experience that I will never forget. It has definitely been one of the highlights of my time in Vienna.