AS Roma v. Fiorentina!!

Today has been amazing. First, I got to sleep in, which is always a good thing. Second, I got to see my favorite team play! Woot! As an added bonus, Francesco Totti started today (he's pretty old so he usually doesn't start). It was just an amazing day for many reasons.

This is a picture of the crowd in the middle of the game. They were a rowdy bunch.

The game had such a crazy atmosphere. When you watch European games on TV you don't really get the same feeling, I can say that with relative certainty. The stadium was absolutely electric. Of course, this is where I can also peg my biggest complaint. Of the things I could understand, the phrases and words that stood out were all the cursing and generally unwarranted yelling. These fans booed everything; they started spouting off when things went wrong; every time a player would go down they would start calling him names; they were just a rowdy group that would fall off a cliff before saying something against their time. I can appreciate that to a certain extent, but this was absolutely mad. De Rossi went down with an injury around the 88th minute and they again started calling him names and booing as he limped off the field and a sub replaced him. Unsportsmanlike and unwarranted. Even the players on the field weren't like that. For me that was the black eye of the entire experience and to the Italian sports fans that I saw today.

On a brighter note, I got to see both Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi -- my two favorite players on the field at the same time!

This is from a corner kick.

Both of them played extraordinarily well in a hard fought match. It was a special day for Totti as well. He scored two goals today and both were record breaking. They were his 200th and 201st goals in Serie A play. That puts him in sixth on the all time list for Italian football. I actually have a picture from one of his goals which you will see below.

Awesome picture, right? This was the penalty kick that gave him his 200th goal. Goalie dove the wrong way!

The rest of the pictures from the match are up in the top right where I normally post my albums. Hope you guys enjoy them.

Tomorrow we leave for Umbria and Perugia around 9 AM. This apparently means we have to pack up our rooms entirely and move them somewhere that hasn't been determined yet. Kind of frustrating. I guess it's a head start for Rome? Either way, it's going to take me a while to put all of my stuff together. Anywho... I think that about sums up my soccer game. It was an unbelievable experience and if you ever have the opportunity to see a game you definitely should.

Until next time, my friends.

God bless!