Silas Avis
Provider: LSE
London, England
2022/23 Year Abroad

I never appreciated how different the intensity of sporting events is when you are here versus when you are in the US. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend several matches as well as an NFL game, all which felt extremely different than any sporting event that I have been to back home. I’ve been an Aston Villa fan for several years now despite them just barely avoiding relegation the past few years, but I would never call myself anything more than a casual fan at best. But at the start of the new year my friend and I bought tickets to the Tottenham vs Aston Villa match where Villa surprisingly won 2-0, we didn’t really recognize just how tense the home crowd which we were right in the middle of was going to be. We knew we had to keep the fact we were rooting for the away team in the home section low key, but we didn’t realize that the second we showed any sort of support for the away team, that the Tottenham fans were going to report us to security, and we would be escorted out of the stadium after going up 1-0.

Luckily, we were able to convince the security guards that we were just Americans that were excited to see a good match and that we had no intention of causing an issue by sitting outside of the away fans section. So out of caution to avoid us getting into a fight they relocated us to different seats and told us that we had to root for Tottenham if we wanted to not get kicked out of the stadium. So, after Douglas Luiz sealed the victory in the 73rd minute we simply sat with blank expressions amongst a crowd of infuriated Tottenham fans, it was awesome.