FIFA Women's World Cup Finals

The Women's World Cup finals were played here in the Shanghai area last week. We were fortunate enough to get tickets to the final night of action, Sunday, September 30. Actually, Kathy Miller got our families the tickets (Thanks Kathy!). The picture here shows the whole crew, from the left is Tom, Natalie, Jamie, Brian, Lauren, and Kathy. We loaded the kids up Sunday afternoon and headed to Subway for some sandwiches. That turned out to be a good idea as the local food inside the stadium was pretty limited. Our driver had originally indicated that he would not be able to drop us at the Hong Kou Football Stadium and would have to drop us at another subway stop. But, that turned out to be a false alarm and he was able to drop us just half a block away. The stadium itself was really nice! It is very new and is located in the northeast portion of the city. Neither Tom nor I had ever been to a soccer game before, so we didn't really know what to expect. It was actually really fun to watch. Jamie and Lauren, Kathy and Brian Miller's kids really enjoyed it. Natalie had a good time too, but mostly because she got to spend the evening with Jamie and Lauren. The short walk into the stadium was actually pretty quick. We had assumed that it might be more like shopping at Carrefour, lots of jostling and a bit inefficient, but it was not at all. The only slight wrinkle was not being able to take our water bottles into the stadium. It was also amazing to see all the food that people brought into the stadium. KFC did a good business that night, that's for sure! The girls made signs and held them up during the games, the Miller girls even had German flags on their faces for the final game!




The first game was 3rd place, between the US and Norway. The US team looked pretty good, though I didn't know any of the players! Well, I guess we knew one, Lilly. The US won, 4-1. Not a whole lot of US fans there, maybe 4-5 pockets of them scattered throughout the entire stadium. The stadium was not quite filled when this game was over, but it filled up before the final. The second game was between Brazil and Germany. Hard to say of there were more Brazilians or Germans there! The majority of attendees were Chinese and they seemed to basically cheer for offense. We left at halftime, the game was zip-zip. But Germany ended up winning, 2:0.