VIVA LA UNDERWATER BOAT DEVILS!

While I'm not the world's biggest soccer fan, it has grown on me a lot over the past couple of years. I had season tickets for Real Salt Lake for a season, still go to a few games each year and paid casual attention to British Premier League games (now that they're on NBC quite a bit).

Over the past year, I've started to get more and more into soccer and it's mostly due to that Manchester United podcast (we've been going strong for almost a full year, only missing one week) that I'm part of. I still don't know much about the intricacies of the game and I couldn't tell you why some players work where others don't, but I'm learning.

The other huge boost that I got was getting laid off just before the World Cup started. I was planning on catching as many games as I could, but figured I'd only be able to catch the Saturday games and daily recaps. That changed, and I took full advantage of my summer vacation and caught as many as I possibly could. Now I'm really starting to get the hang of things.

The Premier League starts up again in a couple of weeks (with the German and Spanish leagues starting soon after), and pretty much every club is in pre-season mode. A whole bunch of teams from Europe (including some of the big names like Manchester United, Man City and Real Madrid) came over the U.S. for a little preseason tournament called the International Champions Cup. It doesn't really mean a whole lot, and it's mostly for the teams to build their profile in the United States, but it's still pretty awesome.

Manchester United was scheduled to play in Denver against AS Roma a few days after the Nine Inch Nails/Soundgarden show, and there was no way that Casey was going to miss it. He bought a couple of tickets and my friend Paddy, who also does the podcast with us, bought a few as well. Casey was going to take his wife, and Paddy was going to take his wife and two kids, but as the game got closer, most of the family bailed. Oz had used up the last of his vacation time on the Soundgarden trip, and Byron couldn't get away, because he and his wife had just their second kid not long ago.

I was still unemployed (still am, more or less), so I took one of the tickets and headed back to the Mile High City for the second time in less than a week.

I flew out early Friday morning, and got into town about 10:30, while Casey, Paddy and our friend Justin drove out got to town about 4 PM. We met up at the hotel and headed to Sports Authority Field to watch an open training session. Roma backed out of theirs, so we waited around in the pouring rain and watched Manchester United run around cones and do ball drills for a couple of hours.

The next day, we headed to the Four Seasons and waited for the team to leave the hotel. Casey and Paddy had a bunch of stuff they were trying to get signed, but the crowd was too big and the only player that stopped to sign anything was Chicharito—and even he only got through a handful of things before he had to get on the bus.

Casey's seats were on the 11th row behind Roma's bench, while Paddy's seats were in the 3rd deck. We split up, and Justin went up with Paddy and his friend that just happened to be in town, while Casey and I went down to our seats. The  field-level corners of the stadium ended up being pretty empty, so eventually we all met up and moved over to some vacant seats and watched the game. For the first half, Casey and I stayed in his seats and we got a great look at a Wayne Rooney goal that was awesome, a Juan Mata goal off a beautiful assist from Rooney and another Rooney goal on a penalty.

Basically, the first half was all Rooney. Since these games don't really matter, the entire team was subbed off at halftime, and the second half was decidedly less exciting, with the exception of a killer Roma goal that was lobbed in from just over mid-field.

Casey and I both way over-prepared for the 20% chance of rain, but didn't prepare at all for the 80% chance of the 95-degree direct sunlight that ended up being the case for most of the first half. It was brutal, but luckily clouds moved in, gave us some shade and cooled things down for the second half. Manchester United ended up winning 3-2 and I've never seen Casey or Paddy in a better mood.

While I'm not really a huge fan of the team, I'm glad to say that I've seen a British Premier League team in action. The quality of play is way better than what I'm used to, and after seeing that in person and spending a month watching World Cup, it's going to be tough to watch an RSL match next time they're on.

But I'll still do it. The Jazz are going to be terrible again, baseball games are getting harder and harder to sit through (more on that later), and the NFL is a complete farce. So let's go soccer!