Last season Man City came out and played a friendly against the Portland Timbers during the summer, of course I wanted to go but I was skint. The game was a one off and tickets were limited to Timbers season ticket holders in a stadium that held about 5000, so tickets would be scarce and expensive. Plus it was just after the World Cup so all of City's international players would not have played either. I looked into flights and they were about $450.00 which seemed a bit pricey for a weekend, so I gave it a miss telling myself that "They'd be back next year anyway"
I like to think that I'm usually right (I'm not) but this time I was.
City announced a 3 game tour to play on the west coast, where they would take on Club America (MEX), Vancouver Whitecaps (CAN) and my second team the LA Galaxy (USA).
I was pretty fucking excited to say the least.
Seeing I would be going to watch the Galaxy play in Vancouver in late July I decided to give the Whitecaps game a miss and got tickets to the Club America and Galaxy games.
The tour kicked off in San Francisco against Club America at AT&T Park home of the SF Giants baseball team. It was strange venue to see a football match, but in fairness it was a lovely stadium. City won quite convincingly 2-0 with goals from McGivern and SWP, I met Mike Summerbee, SWP and Edin Dzeko. Had a great time with my son Liam and friends Mark and Kia. Also met up with the San Francisco MCFC supporters club who seemed very enthusiastic to say the least. Nice to see City getting a bit more global. It was great weekend and made the 12 hour round trip drive certainly seem worthwhile.
Next up was the Whitecaps up in Vancouver. City fell behind early but came back hard in the second half with goals from Guidetti and SWP (again). The most notable thing about this game was the atrocious pitch and the injury to Ya Ya Toure.
Then came the game I never thought I would see, Man City versus LA Galaxy at the Home Depot Center. As you know despite being a lifelong blue, I have also adopted the Galaxy as my second team. I know some of my English friends can be dismissive of this, but the Galaxy have become a big part of my life. I love live football, my kids love going to go to Galaxy games as well, we are a Man City and Galaxy loving family.
City are my first love and I wanted them to win, but I didn't want to see them humiliate the Galaxy like United did to Seattle Sounders a couple of days earlier.
I asked the Galaxian group that we sit with during every game if they'd have a problem with me wearing my City colours during the game and they all said "Go for it"
So the day of the game came and we set off at 9am due to the 1pm kick off, we hit some major traffic on the 110 freeway and it made for a nervous half hour or so, plenty of sweating and swearing. During this time mark got a call from the Galaxy and they had given us two passes to go underground and meet players in the tunnel. This meant that our tailgating was cut short, so we went in early, had a quick picture done with the FA Cup (again) and then went to the tunnel.
It was a bit lame to be honest, saw various players, met Roberto Mancini and Vincent Kompany, then had a chat with Brian Kidd. My mum and dad always told me that when my younger sister was born, Brian Kidd's wife was in the same maternity ward and had the bed next to my mum. Apparently he visited at the same time, chatted with us, but I was only six at the time so couldn't remember. Anyway I recounted this tale to Brian on Sunday, blurted it out like a rambling star struck idiot, gave him the date "December 1972" and he replied "Oh yeah, that's right. nice one"
A family mystery finally cleared up, why I doubted my parents on this I never know, but there you go.
The game was quite entertaining, Mario Balotelli put us 1-0 with a pk after Brian Jordan fouled Micah Richards. Later he was subbed for a bit of showboating when he claimed he thought he was offside. Of course the media blew it out of proportion, if you can't showboat in an exhibition game then when can you showboat?
The Galaxy had a bit of a go in the second half, Magee scored a decent enough goal, even though 99 times out of 100 that shot would have gone 30 feet over the bar. It finished 1-1 and was decided with a pk shoot out which was put to bed by Joe Hart.
Everyone in the Galaxians seemed happy enough with the game, the main downside was the heat, I was a bit burnt.
In all it was a good day, took Kellie and Owen to their first City match (Liam didn't go to this one because he picked the wrong weekend to act up)
I got interview by the City website, saw Will Ferrell, City fan Timothy Dalton (James Bond) and generally had a great time.
I spoke to City's Garry Cook who said they were probably coming back out to the west coast next summer. My guess is they might be the next All Star game opponents.
Anyway, it was a fantastic couple of weeks, always great to see City play and the bonus was meeting so many new City fans. A big shout out to the San Francisco group and Tony Steenson and family from Santa Monica.
CTID.
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