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Espérance Fans Made Tailgate Ted’s Hard Rock Takeover Look Like Amateur Hour
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Lincoln Financial Field hosted on Monday night the first of eight Club World Cup games in Philadelphia this summer, a matchup between Brazil’s Flamengo and a Tunisian side called Espérance, or ES Tunis. Their fans were all over the place, from Reading Terminal Market, to Penn’s Landing, to Rittenhouse, basically a North African foray through the city:
Esperance tunis fans in Liberty Point , Philadelphia
byu/Shroft insoccer
Yeah, see this is how you do a proper road trip. Someone make sure the Washington Communist fans see this. Tailgate Ted got up on a chair in a private section at the Hard Rock Cafe to deliver a speech, like he was Alexander the Great expanding the empire of Macedon through conquest. Espérance fans lit flares in front of the Seaport Museum and marched on the sports complex and mobbed the Greek and Middle Eastern joints at Reading Terminal Market. Then they sang and cheered throughout the entirety of the game, even though their team didn’t even score a goal and ended up losing 2-0. That’s real support.
The Linc, by the way, wasn’t close to being full. The announced attendance was a little under 26,000. That’s to be expected for this game, since neither is a high-profile team that will pull American casuals to the stadium at 9 p.m. on a Monday night. However, if you look at the tickets for next week’s game between Real Madrid and RB Salzburg, the get-in price is $231. And the game between PSG and Atletico Madrid brought about 80,000 to the Rose Bowl. So it’s like typical American sports. The big games with the big teams sell. And the games that are played at 3 p.m. on a Monday aren’t going to do very well. Nobody should be surprised by the trends we’ve seen so far.
Sidenote: I’d love to see the Eagles play in North Africa. Birds vs. Packers in Tunis. Imagine our fans mixing it up with their fans. It would be great. Just one big party out there. Shawarma (with extra tahini sauce) and hoagies for all.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com