Salzburg busted

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Now we were past the security posts, could sigh a breath of relief and take a look around

There was a factory running closed by

Since I bought our tickets off e-bay from an austrian it wasn't easy to tell if it'd be in the midst of greek or russian fans we ended up with. We proceeded to our seats which were at the first row on the right off the goalposts on the north side.

The tribune we sat at proved to be swarmed with supporters of the russian team :o .

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Russian players warming up passing the ball around(they were playing scissors, paper, stone to decide who 'd be in the middle :P )

I had to ask the supporters of russia sitting next to us to take down the flags set up in front of them since they were obscuring our view to the pitch. It went pretty smoothly(the bluesteel zoolander look worked wonders again :D ).

Players warming up left the stadium.

Under the sound of music in came gymnasts doing flip flops and a huge ball was rolled onto the pitch. It was a great atmosphere.

Then the player names were announced german style, that is the speaker called players first name and the fans had to fill up shouting with the surname. I shouted my voice out our players surnames, so much so that a photographer came to us and took very closed up pictures from like 20 cm off our faces(mind you I'd give a lot to know where they are published). Then we all stood up for the national anthems. It was all fair and square without a trace of whistlings to be heard :tup:

[cyberfish]

Great posts sydlending :tup:

Thanks so much for posting this!

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It was a great game. The first half Nikopolidis had the goalpost on stadiums north side were we were sitting at. The tribune was made of metal, so the fans of the russian team were creating a hell of a sound every time Russia was in attack(during the first half) by tramping with their feet or hitting the tribunes outer edge with their hands, much like in an ice hockey game. In order to be heard we were uniting our voices with the shoutings from the tribune on the South side when theirs were ringing throughout the stadium or waiting for moments the russian fans quited down to shout encouraging stuff for Greek players when they were close enough to hear us like bravo Antoni, bravo Kyrgiako, bravo Katsourani and gia sou typara( at the last one all supporters of the russian team at our left that proved to be austrians turned to us and exclaimed in chorus "was"? :D )

Antonis was doing fine and was solid except when he made a judgement which proved to be wrong leaving his goalposts going far out to the left to intercept a long ball that seemed to be wasted. Nevertheless he made fine saves during the game. Charisteas was an attacker the russian defence felt his presence of, with his strength, speed and explosive power. He combined nicely with Gekas when he scored but unfortunately the goal was annulated. Karagounis lifted up the whole team when he came in and gave a great through ball to Charisteas bringing him alone with the keeper but unfortunately it wasn't taken advantage of. he had aslo a great shot where the russina goalkeeper gave a rebound but unfortunately we didn't have any player to follow up and take advantage of that either. Torosidis did some great tacklings, Basinas, Patsa, Lybe, Seitaridis, Amanatidis, Katsouranis Dellas and Kyrgiakos tried hard. Dellas did even come forward dribbling and I ve never before seen him doing this with the national team. Kyrgiakos played as a second centerforward the last minutes and I can tell this guy has amazing technique for being such a big man. A couple of times when are players tried to dribble and penetrate into the box they seemed to lose their balance, probabl the pitch was somewhat slippery although that isn't any excuse since it applied as much for the russian team.

All in all in our experience our team put up a massive effort in this game and there is nothing to complain about as far as we are concerned. S'efxaristoume elladara gia oti mas exeis dosei kai den exoume parapono gia thn prospathia :nw:

Our fans were great too :tup: and made a great effort to support our team although it seemed we were vastly outnumbered in that russian flags covered 3/4 of the tribunes with some isolated greek spots here and there. The russian supporters were very fanatic but not out of line and its worth noticing that they had just celebrated the russian independence day so their patriotic sentiment must have been at an all time high. There were 4-5 austrians at our left supporting the russian team and boy were they not a pain in the ass, they launched a protest when we unfolded our greek flag on the edge of the protective ridge, especially the man next to me was a psycho (the man who had to take down his russian flags set up on the top of the protective ridge where we were sitting), he was waving a russian flag on the faces of security guards or ball boys walking in front of us and shouting a lot of s*it against Greece in german :nono: (the proper Priklopils cousin I presume :tdown: ). Fortunately they left before extra time and boy wasn't that a great good riddance :D

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Trix and Flix showed up during the break

By the way paying a visit to the loo during the break proved to be "onou pokai" as the ancients said(donkeys wool, an impossibility *), there were people lining up outside the toilette and people lining up inside the toilette, so if you'd drunk a lot of beer and couldn't hold off you'd better be prepared to piss at your pants :P

(* http://audiolatinproverbs.blogspot.com/200...am-quaeris.html )

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The players thanked the fans for the game and hitted the change room

The pebble was snatched from the palm :D , so it was time for us to go(*)

There were gals outside advertising for aftermatch parties but we wern't in the mood

It got pretty chaotic out there and couldn't find the busstop back to the city center, whats more the buses were filled up with people standing like sardines in a box, so we snatched ourselves a taxi and got back to our hotel bright and breezy(easy :P ) . The taxi driver tried to be a smart aleck about the match but we told him we didnt mind the result and we were satisfied our team doing their best and playing their hearts out so he had to shut up ;)

(*)http://www.kungfu-guide.com/pilot.html

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By the way thanks Genome and Cyberfish for your good words !

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A fine detail:

During the national anthems 2 fighter jet planes flew a close distance over our heads :tup:

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We arrived at our hotel and we felt totally drained fro energy not only because of having had a veeeeeery long day but not the least having Greece loosing to Russia. As football fans knlow only too well, when your team wins it gives you lots of energy whereas losing "mach's dir kaputt" :P . lept like logs.

Getting up the next day was hard. We trailed it as much as possible. I stood up only to drink a viennese cofee (or was it salzburger cofee :D )and grab a couple of croissants. We checked out only at the last moment.

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Now it was time to turn page and enjoy the city and the local flavour. Fortunately we didnt have any luggage and moving around was easy(or should I say bright and breezy :D ).

I was asked from my so called better half :) to buy "Mozart kugeln" which is a marsipann ball with chocolate cover ball produced in Austria , but because it was sunday and the shops closed at that point we thought we'd take at least a picture to have something to give if the worst came to worst and didnt buy any :P

but not before we came across this house

did I realize, by Salzach! :D, Salzburg is the city Mozart was born in :o