Jeonju World Cup Stadium
Jeonju South Korea
June 7th, 2011. South Korea hosting Ghana in an international friendly in Jeonju, South Korea. Never having seen Ghana play in person before I wasn’t going to miss it. Problems: I don’t know how to get tickets, and I live two hours north of Jeonju.
Buying tickets turned out to be one of the most difficult things I’ve done in Korea. My students weren’t as helpful as I thought they would be. After a week of not really having any clue themselves they finally found out how to buy them. Only you had to be a member of the KFA (Korean Football Association) and the 1st and 2nd class tickets were already sold out. This being a Ghana game, I was prepared to shell out serious money to have good seats. Finally I found out that you could buy tickets through one of banks here, so I trekked over to the bank to purchase my tickets. There were only two other people a head of me, so I took my number and waited in what I thought would be a short line, turns out both people ahead of me had decided to open new bank accounts or do some other time consuming process. But finally it was my turn. after telling the teller what I wanted she proceeded to print out a little map of the stadium and tell me where all the seats where. She mentioned 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes. Really? I was so excited! I quickly bought ad paid for four 2nd class tickets. I knew they couldn’t all be sold out. I waited with growing excitement as she went about printing off the tickets. But as she handed them over to show me she said, “sorry, 2nd class all sold out.” What?? How can I pay for tickets, and she prints them off and only then does she realize they are all sold out! Oh well, I took the 3rd class tickets (which turned out to be the best anyways) and was just happy to finally have tickets.
Finally the day of the match arrived. Tuesday, June 7th, 2011. Two other co-workers, my girlfriend and I were all headed down for the game. The match was going to be played in Jeonju, which is about 2 hours south of where we live now. So, we got directions and headed south. We all wanted to get there early. Me, to get the best seats possible (since 3rd class had no assigned seats) and the others because they wanted to eat and drink. The ride down was pretty uneventful. We did have to stop to pee and grab some less than gourmet hot dogs as snacks.
We arrived 2 hours before kick off time, but the stands were already starting to fill up. Since our tickets were just first come first serve, I was starting to get really worried. After seeing where the Ghanaian fans were sitting, we heading to the same section. While scouting for a specific seat a Ghanaian guy starting talking to me, asking where I was from and everything. When I told him I was born in Accra, he was excited and asked for my name, I told him, and then while I was asking his name, he started to ask the names of my friends…but didn’t tell us his name…actually after sitting with us for four hours, we never learned his name. Haha, weird. But he was a nice guy, got us free t-shirts that the other Ghanaian supporters were wearing, vuvuzelas and thunder sticks. Also turns out, with our shirts, we qualified for the “free beer for Ghanaian fans program.”
Ghana didn’t send their first team for this friendly in Korea, so I didn’t get to see some of my favorite players play, but Korea had their full strength team. Ghana did not play their best, they looked sluggish and a bit tired. Prolly due to the fact that they had played an African Nations Cup qualifier on Friday (Saturday Korean time) and then flown half way around the world to Korea. But Korea did pass a lot better and ended up winning 2-1. Oh well. Asamoah Gyan scored a brilliant goal, on a beautiful pass from captain Sulley Muntari, right in front of us in the Ghana section. Still, we spent four hours at a Ghana soccer party.
Over all, it was the best soccer game I have ever been to in my life! Can’t wait to watch them in the World Cup one day. And here are some of my pictures from the outing:
Through My Canon's Eye 