Some father-son outings are camping trips to the woods. Our first father-son journey was to England, to watch Liverpool, Everton and Manchester United, three of the top clubs in England's Premier League. He would get to sit with tens of thousands of singing, rabid fans.
Eric's interest in soccer is threefold: He played on a team for the first time last fall; he's been watching European matches on television; and he's become familiar with the players through his Wii game.
England is a less expensive destination than it was a year ago, but while you can get good deals on hotels, getting tickets to British soccer matches can be a bit challenging.
Most of the time, they go on sale only several weeks in advance and they are sold to various groups in stages. Season-ticket holders go first, followed by members of supporters clubs. Only after that are any remaining tickets made available for general sale.
However, in recent years some team websites have started resale services for season-ticket holders to make their seats available to others. Many teams also have started bundling hospitality seats with meals at stadium restaurants and even with hotel rooms. Tickets, for the most part, are in the $70-$80 range at current exchange rates. Fans may wear shirts and colours of the away club only if they are in sections specifically set aside for supporters of the visitors. The season runs from August through May.
FAMILY FRIENDLY
Since the reforms that followed crowd trouble in the 1980s, standing-room has been eliminated and the atmosphere is far more family friendly -- although don't expect more than minimal food such as fish-and-chips and soup.
Liverpool is about an hour away from Manchester by car, bus or train. Liverpool's stadium, Anfield, opened in 1884 and seats about 45,000 -- meaning every seat is close to the field. While the stands have been rebuilt in recent decades, the team hopes to build a new 73,000-seat ground next door.
Outside Anfield, Eric viewed the Hillsborough Memorial -- dedicated to the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death at the 1989 Football Association Cup semifinal -- and its eternal flame. We also saw the wrought-iron Paisley Gates and Shankly Gates, named for two former Liverpool managers, Bob Paisley and Bill Shankly.
The seats at Anfield are made of wood and there is little leg room, but the atmosphere can't be beat. We got to see Robbie Keane score two superb goals, one off a nifty pass by Steven Gerrard, the other on a fastbreak started by a rollout pass by goalkeeper Pepe Reina. Final score: Liverpool 3, Bolton 0.
Two days later we took the train from Manchester's Picadilly Station to Liverpool's Lime Street Station. We got there early and went to the Beatles Story museum at the Albert Docks -- I found it interesting, Eric was thoroughly bored.
BLUE SEATS
Then we went to Liverpool's other stadium, Goodison Park, where the seats are blue and many of the fans are dressed in blue. Opened in 1892, it seats 40,000 and is even more cramped than Anfield. Both are plopped into the middle of residential neighbourhoods.
While Liverpool is one of the "Big Four" along with Manchester United and London's Arsenal and Chelsea, Everton bills itself as "The People's Club." There was even a video board for replays, which was lacking at Anfield, and a mascot.
Mikel Arteta scored twice, on a free kick and on the rebound of his own free kick, in a 3-0 win over Sunderland. Eric began to think every match he attended would be a 3-0 final. He especially liked the public-address announcer, who when reading the out-of-town scores on the video board declined to mention Liverpool had won 5-1 at Newscastle, saying: "I'm not going to even mention the first one."
We spent the next afternoon at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester and discovered there are so many interesting displays that we could have spent two or three days there. After going back to the hotel for a bite, it was time to take the super-convenient Metrolink tram to Old Trafford, which bills itself as the "Theatre of Dreams."
England's largest club ground holds 76,000 fans and has modern, moulded-plastic seats, far different from when it opened in 1910. Nearly everyone is dressed in red and there is loud music, with speakers blaring a Manchester United version of the old John Denver hit Take Me Home, Country Roads.
For all the modernization at Old Trafford, there were few options for food, and on the end of the stadium where we had tickets there were no visible escalators or lifts. But the fan singing was far louder than at the other grounds.
Even with enough stars to fill two lineups, United struggled to beat Middlesbrough 1-0 on a second-half goal by Dimitar Berbatov, dashing Eric's hopes for another 3-0 game. Still, on the tram home, he pronounced the trip a success.
We headed back to New York the next day. Eric wanted to know whether next year we could go to Milan to watch AC Milan play at San Siro.
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