In elementary school gym class, I learned to dribble, pass, and shoot a soccer ball. When my children were in preschool, I helped coach their soccer teams, making sure we had enough juice boxes and orange slices for halftime. But like many Americans, my experience with the sport is limited — and I never developed into a fan.
In recent years, however, I’ve gained more exposure to European “football” by watching “Ted Lasso” and “Welcome to Wrexham.” I’ve seen how much passion it engenders — especially in England. So when my son, Tommy, spent the spring semester in London as part of his studies at Northeastern University, we made a plan: to attend our first Premier League game.
Longtime fans promised something unique. “The atmosphere at a Premier League game is superior in every way to professional sports in America,” said Bob Sturm , a Dallas sports radio host who’s taken friends to England to see games for the last 15 years. He argues US games draw disproportionate numbers of casual fans or expense account types.
“In the UK, you’ll find every seat is occupied, nobody is in the aisle or going to get beer [during play], and everybody stays off their phone to watch the match,” Sturm says. “It’s a really communal experience.” Advertisement For a first-timer, however, that experience can seem complicated.
There are customs that will seem alien to people used to visiting Fenway Park or Gillette Stadium, and we worried about feeling like imposters. Many of the rules are a response to the behavior of young, lawless British soccer fans in the 1980s. “One of the things that’s made English soccer so popular is its history of hooligan violence,” says Jonathan Clegg, sports editor at the Wall Street Journal and coauthor of “ The Club ,” a book about the rise of the Premier League .
“Even though that’s now gone, there is a sort of frisson you get when you attend ...
[that] gives the atmosphere a slightly different quality than any other professional sport.” Based on my family’s experience attending a game in March, as well as interviews with soccer travel experts and veteran attendees, here’s what to keep in mind: Advertisement Choosing a game: There are 20 teams in the Premier League. Seven of them play in or around London, including three of the six most popular teams : Chelsea, Arsenal, and Tottenham.
If you decide to travel beyond London, you can usually do it as a day trip. For example, the train ride from London to Manchester, home of Manchester City and Manchester United, takes just over two hours. On the Sunday we visited, the only game in London was West Ham versus Aston Villa, played at London Stadium.
West Ham is less glitzy than Arsenal or Chelsea, with more working-class, East End fans and fewer tourists. Aston Villa, based in Birmingham, is one of the league’s oldest clubs and counts Prince William, Ozzy Osbourne, and Tom Hanks among its celebrity supporters. London Stadium, built for the 2012 Olympics, lacks the history of the league’s prewar stadiums, but it’s located a short walk from the Tube with easy connections to downtown London.
Getting tickets: Tickets to English soccer are generally cheaper than comparable seats to American pro sporting events. We paid $75 per ticket for lower sideline seats, one-third the price of comparable seats to a Patriots game. Compared with the United States, in England the secondary market (sites like StubHub or SeatGeek) is strictly limited and considered less trustworthy.
Most of the soccer clubs resell tickets on their own websites, which is where we made our purchase. Veterans differ on the best places to sit. The sidelines or upper levels allow for a whole-field view, but end seats, which are cheaper and preferred by rowdier fans, give better close-up views to action near one goal.
At every stadium, visiting team fans are segregated in one end section, and Clegg says his favorite place to sit is nearby, where you can experience the trash talk and chants between opposing supporters. Advertisement For people who want a white-glove experience, some tour operators offer packages. Bhavish Thakrar owns Premier League Tours , which brings 1,200 people a year to Britain for trips that typically include two or three games.
“We do everything for [our guests] — chauffeurs, team shirts, taking them to the museum or on stadium tours before the game,” says Thakrar, whose packages typically cost $750 a person and up. His guests often get access to a VIP lounge, but during the match, most choose to sit out in the crowd. “Near the away fans — that’s where the real action is,” Thakrar says.
Before the match: There is no tailgating before English soccer games. Some teams offer museum or stadium tours. Earlier in the season, Tommy toured Etihad Stadium , home to Manchester City.
He was impressed by the luxurious locker room, and when the tour guide took guests down the tunnel and onto the field, loudspeakers played the team’s entrance music. “It gave you a sense of what it would be like to play for the team,” he says. West Ham offers a variety of tours of London Stadium starting at £20 a person.
Instead, we opted for a visit to The Cow, a favorite pub of “Hammers,” as West Ham supporters call themselves. The first floor was wall-to-wall people, pints in hand, but a bouncer suggested we head upstairs for table service and a brunch menu. The food (fish and chips, avocado toast, and a steak sandwich) was ample and tasty.
Pro tip: If you wait to be seated after noon, the limited brunch menu is replaced by the lunch menu, with more choices. Advertisement At the stadium: We arrived early to watch warm-ups. “Good seats,” Tommy said as we sat down.
Although London Stadium has only slightly larger capacity than Gillette Stadium, it’s built to feel lower and more horizontal instead of vertical. As a result, even upper deck seats have good sight lines and feel relatively close to the action. After watching the players stretch and run, we descended to the concourse, where my son and I ordered pints of Foster’s.
London Stadium features the most expensive beer in the Premier League, but at £6.30 a pint ( around $8), it’s cheaper than what I’m used to paying stateside . At English stadiums, alcohol can be consumed only on the concourse; you can’t bring beer to your seat.
Since no one leaves their seats during play, that limits in-stadium drinking to pre-game and halftime, reducing the odds of hooliganism. At least where we were seated, the crowd was more docile than what we’ve seen on a typical Sunday in Foxborough. Five minutes before the start of the match, the stands were nearly filled.
The PA system blasted “London Calling” by the Clash, and the crowd began to come alive. Along the sideline, machines began churning out bubbles, and the crowd sang an old-timey song called “ Forever Blowing Bubbles ,” part of a century-old ritual (with an arcane backstory ) that was repeated at intervals throughout the match, along with hard-to-decipher chants that are unique to each team. Advertisement Watching the match: My biggest concern was how little I understand what happens on the pitch.
On television, I’ve found soccer to be boring. In person, the match held my attention. The biggest factor was the lack of timeouts or stops in the action.
When I attend live US sporting events, the timeouts feel frequent and interminable, but in this game, the action rarely stopped for more than a moment or two. In the first half, West Ham dominated, and the ball was constantly in the vicinity of Aston Villa’s goal. Midway through the half, West Ham took a 1-0 lead on a header off a cross-field pass.
“This is more fun that I expected,” my wife said, as we headed back to the concourse for food at halftime. We declined the popular meat pies and instead noshed on popcorn and a pretzel. In the second half, even a novice soccer fan could sense that Aston Villa’s adjustments had been effective.
Early on, West Ham scored off a corner kick, but referees overturned it on video review, declaring it a “hand ball.” At 78 minutes Aston Villa tied the match, creating suspense as the match ticked up toward 90 minutes. At one point a West Ham player broke free down the right sideline.
“Go love! Go love!,” screamed a fan as the crowd rose. The shot missed. Three minutes into extra time, amid a scrum of players falling into the net, West Ham scored the apparent game-winner.
“That was sick,” Tommy said approvingly. The crowd erupted. But on the field there was a controversy: Had this goal also been a hand ball? After a long video review, the referee overturned the goal.
The crowd sat, deflated. A moment later, the match ended in a 1-1 draw. After the game, the crowd filed out in eerie silence, with uniformed security guards lining the route to the Tube.
My wife remarked how well-behaved everyone was — and how differently Boston fans would have reacted to having a win overturned by a last-second referee’s call. Back on the train, we debriefed. The game had been more engaging and less rowdy than we’d expected.
It would be a stretch to classify us as fans, but over the coming months, we found ourselves occasionally watching games on TV. For a fuller transformation, on our next visit we’ll try a game at Arsenal. The 2024-25 Premier League season begins on Aug.
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