Today we return to football tourism with our quest to visit all the stadiums in the English Premier League. Up to this point we’ve covered Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, Fulham’s Craven Cottage, West Ham’s London Stadium, Spurs’ Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and Brighton’s AmEx Stadium. Now, at long last, we’re visiting Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, which sits in North London, within walking distance of my new flat! We’re going watch the EFL Cup quarter-final against the classic South-London side, Crystal Palace.

So here’s our destination today, along with a couple of nice pictures from the walk over. This match took place on December 23rd, so you will see lots of Christmas imagery & references in the images.

Little by little I am visiting other places in the UK besides London. Believe it or not, Brighton was only the 3rd non-London location that I’d visited… but we’re not even going to see much of the city on this trip (we’ll come back for that soon). Today, we’re going to continue coverage of the European football/soccer circuit with an English Premier League match in Brighton. The match is Brighton & Hove Albion (a.k.a “Brighton”) v. Wolverhampton Wanderers (a.k.a. “Wolves). Here’s exactly where this match took place: Brighton’s AmEx Stadium, also known by its non-sponsorship name, Falmer Stadium.

Tonight is not a regular season match! No; this is UEFA Champions League (UCL). If you are not familiar, UCL is where to top placing teams from the domestic leagues all around Europe play against each other. So, for example, Arsenal plays in the English Premiere League, while Juventus plays in Italian Serie A. These are two famous clubs that would never play against each other during regular season play. The only place where you see international cross-over is UCL, and that is why it’s one of the coolest things in sports! Only the best teams from each domestic league will qualify, and the exact number of teams that make it into UCL from each domestic league depends on how good that league is. So, for example, in Ligue 1 (France) the top 3 teams qualify for the next season of UCL, where as La Liga (Spain) it’s the top 4 teams. This is because La Liga is more competitive than Ligue 1. How “competitiveness” is measured is subject to some controversy… but that’s the gist of it.

So this is a Champions League match, and PSG are up against the Spanish side Girona, who came out of nowhere to finish 3rd in their 2023/2024 campaign, behind only Barça and Real Madrid. Let’s do this!

Naples takes its calcio (football a.k.a. soccer) seriously. Support for Napoli is almost a religious belief here, and the fact that images of Maradona (the most famous Napoli player ever) outnumber images of Jesus in the streets of Naples can serve as proof of that. But it’s not just Maradona; there are images of the Napoli logo and Napoli players everywhere around Naples.

And we’re back with more of the beautiful game! And my quest to get to as many stadiums in London as possible continues, this time with Craven Cottage, where Fulham will host the mighty Liverpool in the 2nd leg of the EFL Cup semi-final. In the 1st leg, Liverpool beat Fulham 2-1. This match would decide who moved on to the final. This will be the smallest Premier League stadium I’ve yet visited, so it should be a good time.

My quest to visit all of the football stadiums in London continues, this time with Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in North London. Today we’re going to be seeing the Spurs play against Bournemouth.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is incredible. It is absolutely the nicest stadium I have ever been in. The floors under the overhang are carpet! As soon as I walked in I was involuntarily smiling. And then, when I realized that we had unwittingly gotten AMAZING seats, I was really grinning. This was one of the coolest atmospheres I’ve ever experienced! Before the game even started, I already liked this stadium more than Stamford Bridge, and a LOT more than London Stadium.

For the unindoctrinated, Everton is a Liverpool-based team coming to play on West Ham’s home turf. This is an interesting season for Everton because they were docked 10-points in what the football world has unanimously agreed is an injustice of the highest order. After that, death (i.e. relegation) seemed inevitable, but they have harnessed their collective spite to mount a revenge-fueled run of wins that has put them comfortably in the center of the table, safe from the relegation zone. If it wasn’t for those 10 points, they would be a strong contender for European qualification right now. Unfortunately for West Ham, this would ultimately mean a home-defeat for them. So there were lots of angry fans in East London on this day, but that’s part of the magic of the game. ✨

Today we’re going to Stamford Bridge to see Chelsea v. Brighton in the EFL Cup a.k.a. the Carabao Cup!

This is not technically my first English Premier League (EPL) game because it’s a cup game (i.e. it’s not part of the regular season, it’s a separate competition) but it’s still a good time. So let’s get into what this experience was like… because, it was an experience.

The Welshman Gareth Bale has been one of the most notable players in the world since the late 2000s when he transferred from Southampton to Tottenham Hotspur. This was before my days of fandom, but I think he really became a star after his 2013 transfer to Real Madrid. His is a name that American kids grew up knowing, mostly likely, thanks to the FIFA video games. He’s a big deal. But he’s getting older now and hadn’t been playing much at Real Madrid anymore, so ahead of his appearance in the 2022 World Cup, he made a surprise transfer to LAFC. Honestly, the golden age of Gareth Bale was a bit before the start of my fandom, but this was a huge “get” for MLS! You can find his insane highlight reel here.