European Club Tours - Buyer Beware

I'm curious about the experience of others at these "friendlies". I'm unfortunately not able to get to Columbus but decided to get my fix by attending the AC Milan-Chelsea match at Foxboro Sunday. While I'll admit I might do it again I ended up feeling somewhat ripped off:

1. Overpriced tickets $40-$100. Had good seats near corner flag for $55 but it still seems a bit pricey for a friendly.

2. Parking - $25. For those of you who don't know this is not in a downtown area. It's out in the middle of nowhere suburbia. Say no more.

3. Despite a crowd of only 26,000 (see #1) there was an hour plus traffic jam getting into the stadium lot - we ended up missing about 18 minutes including the only goal. The traffic pattern exiting the parking lot was equally pathetic. They clearly did not spend any money for traffic control personnel or pay enough parking cashiers since they somehow get nearly 70,000 into and out of the place for the Patriots.

4. To grudingly give them credit, Chelski brought all their players. put them all on the field for some period of time and played to win. AC Milan left home many of their stars including Dida, Kaka and Schevchenko and some of the players who were in the game - Vieri a prime example - were barely going through the motions. The result was a pretty one-sided game but I guess it's better that one team cared than neither.

Anschutz is promoting the tour and he's certainly lost plenty subisizing pro soccer in the US so you can't begrudge him a few bucks on this. Still, it would seem smarter to lower the price, attract bigger crowds to generate more excitement and not leave people with a vague feeling like they've been had.

 

Dan, you are right!

This has been the problem with Euro friendlies in the past... no matter what they say when the contracts are being signed, many or most teams "leave their boots at home' which has resulted in a definite distaste for these set-ups.

The Crew, for example have hosted 4 european teams at Crew Stadium... of the four, only one came to actually get some play in... the rest were made up of reserves and prospects, with the result that even the fledgling Crew knocked them silly.

I believe that the Real Madrid tour might have changed this paradigm... though the Real team probably let off some, they brought all their stars and put them on the pitch, with the result that fans seem to think they have their money's worth.

I'm thinking that there will be tougher contractual promises in the future.

 

Even though it wasn't great, it sounds like the match I saw may have been better than many others. A big Brazilian and Portuguese crowd motivated some of the Milan players like Serginho, Cafu and Rui Costa but many of the other players on Milan didn't care. Charging half the price, say $25 to $50 would be fair to me and in the Boston area they may have doubled the crowd by doing that. Unfortunately I think their formula is to gouge the smaller number of hard core fans who can't resist and will pay whatever they charge. That way they keep their expenses down and make a few more bucks. It would certainly be better for the game in the US if they filled up more of the stadium and made it more affordable for families with young kids.