This past weekend, I made it to another football stadium, this one Parc des Princes in Paris, France. The match was perhaps the biggest of the weekend in Ligue Un as Paris St.-Germain hosted Olympique Lyon.
I purchased the ticket a few months ago, as soon as the schedule was released, and had to pick up the ticket from the French equivalent of a will call window. First, of course, I had to get to the stadium. Parc des Princes is on the nine line of the Paris metro, a short walk from the Porte de St. Cloud stop. Fortunately, this stop was on the same line as a stop close to my hotel, so finding the stadium was no problem. At first, there was a little problem pulling up my ticket at the ticket window, but after about five minutes, all was resolved and I had my ticket.
Security around the stadium was heavy, with numerous armed policemen around every entrance. I’ve learned to expect this at European sporting events, but this was even heavier than I had previously witnessed.
The gates opened around an hour and a half before kickoff and I went upstairs to where my seats were located. Since I had some extra time, I decided to get some food and saw that the concession stands were selling hot dogs, so I tried one. The dog itself was good, neither the best I’ve ever had nor the worst, but the bun was essentially a mini-baguette, which added to the most unique hot dog eating experience I’ve ever had. After taking a few pictures of it, I ate it and it was quite good.
I didn’t see anybody selling beer but I did see a few people walking around with beer. I don’t know if they brought it in from outside (a lot of people were drinking outside the stadium) or if there was some place to purchase it from inside that I didn’t see, but those who had it were able to take it to their seats, unlike at the English matches that I attended.
The pitch and surrounding seats themselves were wonderful. Though I know there are several larger ones, this was the largest soccer-specific stadium to which I have ever been, seating nearly 50,000. I’m not sure if the match was sold out, though it appeared to be close as the only empty seats that I could see were in the upper corner of the visitors’ side. The crowd was loud, but generally mild except for the supporters section at one end of the stadium who were balls-to-the-wall crazy the entire time. They reminded me of the Barra Brava section of my hometown DC United club, only much larger and much louder.
The match itself was excellent. PSG took an early 1-0 lead and had several more chances for goals throughout the match to extend the lead but none of them came to fruition. Lyon finally turned on the jets with about twenty minutes to go and an equalizer appeared imminent. At around the 85th minute, the equalizer finally came, much to the dismay of the crowd I was in, and the match finished 1-1.
Although my French is elementary, to say the least, I had very few problems navigating around the stadium or interacting with the people therein. After the match, I returned to Porte de St. Cloud expecting total chaos given the number of people at the match. Although there was some chaos, it was controlled chaos and I got through the turnstiles and onto a train rather quickly and returned to Montmartre.
My first football match experience on the continent was a great one, with a great stadium, great crowd and great match. If you’re a football fan (and you probably aren’t reading this if you are not) and you find yourself in Paris, I highly recommend catching a match at Parc des Princes.
Posts
