Bowlings Abroad

Originally shared in “Takes and Typos” Feb 17, 2025

The nation’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocate was confirmed this week as Secretary of Health and Human Services, placing nearly all federal healthcare programs under his supervision.

Meanwhile, the Senate advanced Kash Patel’s nomination for FBI Director, setting the stage for his likely confirmation as the most overtly political head of the bureau since J. Edgar Hoover.

If you know your 20th-century history, you might recall that after Hoover’s tenure, a series of reforms reined in the FBI’s excesses. Now, Kash Patel—a regular on QAnon podcasts—enters the role with a declared list of domestic enemies he intends to punish using federal law enforcement.

But those aren’t today’s topic.

If you know me, you know I love the beautiful game. I played as a kid—badly, I’ll admit. Like most American sports fans, I grew up following and playing multiple sports. Baseball was my first love (and I was a decent third baseman). But years of Mariner futility and the outright theft of my beloved Sonics by oligarch Clay Bennett pushed me deeper into soccer in the early 2000s.

I love going to matches.

I love playing pickup games—though, again, I’m not very good.

I love watching matches on TV.

Hell, I even love stopping to watch locals play when I’m traveling.

Thankfully, my wife humors me. She doesn’t mind when I sneak glimpses of a match on TV during dinner, and she’s even developed a bit of a soccer obsession herself.

In December, on our way back from the US, we flew into Manchester and used it as our home base for some football adventuring.

One of the teams I follow is Sheffield Wednesday. I became interested in The Owls after reading The Ball Is Round, a roughly 1,000-page history of football and one of the best books I’ve ever read on the sport.

Buying tickets for English matches isn’t as simple as hopping on Ticketmaster. To curb hooliganism, most clubs require you to have a “Supporter ID”, and many also require a club membership. For some teams—especially in the Premier League—if you’re not a season ticket holder, your chances of getting a ticket are basically zero.

Knowing this, I did some legwork in the fall to get both a supporter number and a team membership, the two things I needed to buy tickets. So in December, we took a train down to Sheffield to watch Wednesday face their local rivals, Derby County—a fixture that has been played since at least 1890.

Although Wednesday is one of England’s most storied clubs, they were only recently promoted back to the Championship, the second tier of English football. That day, The Owls thumped Derby. We had perfect midfield seats, and I found myself next to a proper geezer (meant with the utmost reverence) who had been attending matches for 60 years.

Before heading to Sheffield, we took a train to Liverpool for a tour of Anfield, the hallowed home of Liverpool Football Club. We’d previously been there for a match in 2023 (a nervy home win over Nottingham Forest) but this time, we got the full behind-the-scenes experience: the locker rooms, the press box, the pitch itself.

I’ve been to the White House, the Great Wall, and the Vatican. None of them made me feel the things Anfield did.

After posting pictures from our December stadium tour, a friend reached out with an idea. A friend… or a friend of a friend… or maybe a friend of a friend of a friend—someone—had Liverpool season tickets and might be able to help us get into a match. Apparently, the friend got on the waiting list while he was in college and had to wait over 20 years before becoming a season ticket holder.

Long story short, the connection came through. With Hope's blessing, I flew back to Manchester just before midnight last Wednesday, landed at 6:00 a.m., and caught a train to Liverpool for that evening's match at Anfield.

Liverpool faced Tottenham Hotspur in the EFL Cup semifinals and cruised to a 4-0 victory in front of over 50,000 screaming, singing supporters. Our seats were incredible—third row behind the Tottenham bench. I got emotional during the pre-match rendition of the team anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone, and was close enough to hear Tottenham manager, Ange Postecoglou, yelling directions at his defenders (who absolutely did not follow them).

After the match, I just stood there, breathing it all in as the crowd continued to sing while Slot and Van Dijk did their post-match interviews.

The next morning, Friday, we made our way back to Manchester.

My appetite for the game is nearly insatiable, so after Thursday’s fixture, I was determined to catch another match on Saturday.

But last week was an FA Cup weekend, which disrupted most of the usual scheduled matches. I spent most of January trying to secure tickets to a match we could attend. At one point, I had tickets to a game in Wales between Wrexham and Leyton Orient, but that match got rescheduled after Orient advanced in the FA Cup.

We ended up going to a League Two match. British football league names can be confusing. The Premier League is the top tier, the second tier is called the Championship, and the third tier is League One. Don’t ask me why—I didn’t design it. So, League Two is actually the fourth tier of the English football pyramid.

We watched Salford City, a team founded in 1940, take on Tranmere Rovers. Tranmere, established in 1884, has a storied history, having spent several seasons in the higher divisions before settling into League Two. The match was at Moor Lane in Salford, a small yet modern venue that seats about 6,000. The atmosphere was electric, the football was decent, the hand pies were meaty, and once again, the team we were rooting for won.

We headed back to Manchester, and I flew back to Abu Dhabi landing around 11:00 p.m., and reporting to work fresh Monday morning—no worse for wear and grinning ear to ear.