Millionaros vs. Santa Fe

On Sunday night, Bethany, Whitney, and I went with Mafe and her brother and uncle, and two fathers with their sons, to a soccer game. The two teams playing were the Millionaros and Santa Fe, both from Bogota. This was a pretty cool game to us because their is a battle at school over the two teams and which is better. Most of the school are Millionaros fans but we have a few pretty intense Santa Fe fans, one of which used to play for Santa Fe.

So, we payed our 20,000 (10 dollars) for a ticket and went to El Campin (the stadium) wearing blue for the Millionaros. I bought a Jersey that Mr. Chomoro bargained to lower the price to 18,000 (9 dollars)- so cheap! We had great seats right in the middle of the feild and in the highest section. The excitement from both teams was incredible (probably something like a Carolina vs. NCState game). However, the fans get a bit more violent than college football fans. Did you know that when the Colombian scored a point for the wrong team a few years ago, the fans killed him when he returned to the country...ridiculous! There were fully armed and sheilded policia everywhere and when a player threw the ball in from the sidelines, 4-5 Policia with their sheilds would surround him to block him from the crowd. We felt pretty safe there but I definitely will not cheer for the Millos in front of a stranger from the other team. The players are also pretty violent towards each other, I guess that could be assumed, but I guess in the US you don't see that so much because of all the rules that we have for games to avoid disorder. One of the Millios players fell down and a Santa fe player offered to help him up. That seemed like the right thing to do but then a Millos player ran up and pulled the Santa Fe's hand away from the Millos' because it must be insulting to be helped by the opposite team...geez.

While there we learned some chants from the Millos fans, many of which we also learned new words that we had to bleep out, and new futbol (soccer) vocabulary in spanish. It was neat to feel like we actually fit in. Normally we are the ones who look different, but wearing the blue and cheering made us feel like Colombians and part of their culture.

The final score was 1-0 Millos, yay! It was a great game and definitely a learning experience.