Pre-game nerves, Califnornia style - Margin

So as it turns out, California is different. Very different to New York in fact.

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“I hate soccer” was the first thing I heard about the sport I love, and I heard it without solicitation.

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The gruff and seemingly rather negative Mike who runs the hostel I’ve booked a room in hates the World Cup. It is everywhere apparently, and worse still the hostel will be showing it in its rather impressive mini cinema every day. I plan to watch it elsewhere but it is at least there as a back up plan.

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Or I thought I’d be watching it elsewhere. But then I wasn’t so sure. A quick chat with adorable Alex, a pretty blonde Oakland girl, first thing on my first morning in the city made clear that football is not part of her world either.

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Now as some of you know, Ebren and I are Oakland A’s fans. This surprised her as she assumed only Oaky locals know about their team. She even suggested I go see the Giants play as it is more central and means I won’t have to waste time in a dull part of town.

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Football meanwhile: “Oh yeah, you guys get really violent about that don’t ya?” was pretty much all she knew of the subject. I reassured her that violent was the wrong word, just in case she got the wrong impression of us Brits. Aggressive would be more accurate.

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Anyway, a quick wander around town and I wasn’t sure what Mike’s problem was. There are no signs up outside pubs. No one asked me about “the big game”. Frankly if football didn’t exist as a global phenomenon it seems the surface of San Francisco would change not one bit.

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Fortunately the surface is superficial. The game is on. Not in the commercial money spinning way that New York has it. But sports bars will be showing games as a standard. The wide variety of supposedly Irish pubs will also have games on their screens.

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One lad whose name I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer, was well up for the match tomorrow. His mate owns a bar in Presidio and they convinced him to open at 10am so they could all pile in there and enjoy while eating a barbeque breakfast. He’s confident the USA will win. I set him straight as best I could but his knowledge of the England team was pretty weak.

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The same can not be said for the couple from Vancouver I met last night after my mini-date with a waitress from a downtown diner. Of course I didn’t talk football with her. That tends to kill dates in England and I had no intention of testing that aspect to Californian life right then.

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The couple from Vancouver were from Ireland originally and were on holiday in California for a couple of weeks like me. She doesn’t like football, but he has forced her along to various games. We watched the basketball as the Celtics drew level in the series with the Lakers. Being Irish he wants England to lose. But he would happily see England win the world cup if France were humiliated along the way.

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Along with that couple, I got chatting to a pleasant mother and daughter from Pennsylvania. The mother knew quite a bit about soccer and it turns out her husband was from Brooklyn. She was particularly keen to stress they were fans of Wayne Rooney, before moving on to other sports.

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Eileen, her lovely daughter, had bought her out to California as she was on a business trip and it made for a nice treat. She however was not interested in sport. She knew there was a world cup, but had little to say about it.

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Then the barman overheard us chatting and promised he’d be open early for the big game. So Colin from Vancouver and I will meet up at 10am for breakfast before supporting opposing sides.

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Please god England don’t let me down!