Rennes 3 - OM 1, or… Rennes 4 - Eric 20/20

My first European 'football' match. "Stade Rennais" vs. "Olympique de Marseille", two somewhat evenly matched teams on the field, but certainly not in the stands. The Packer fans out there will understand; there were lots of similarities.

• Record attendance: the last time this stadium saw this many people (almost 30,000) was the last time Marseille played Rennes.
  
• The bars around the stadium could not keep up with the demand of thirsty Marseille fans, all wearing their OM light blue and white.
  
• The fans didn't quit cheering, really, they cheered for 90 minutes straight. It started before the match, hit a high when OM scored the first goal, and continued until the end of the game, even though Rennes had scored their 3 by then.
  
• And although OM has not won a championship since 1993 (?), the fans still are true to their team.
  

But now, here are a few differences.

• The stadium personnel and the police, while very respectful, treated the Marseille fans like animals. Really. There was only one entrance for all the Marseille fans. I personally was padded down three times (me, Andrew). We passed through one locked gate, then something like a cattle chute, then up some stairs where, once inside, we were locked in. I'm not kidding. The 15 foot gates were closed and we were in for the entire match. There was no leaving.
  
• A perfect example of how, for the French, less is more: the real fans, Eric tells me, only sport a scarf and perhaps the jacket of their own OM fan club. The amateurs, on the other hand, go overboard with jackets, jerseys, flags, you name it, they have it. A big change from Wisconsin where if you don't wear green and gold on Sunday, you must be from Illinois.
  
• The Marseille fans were 99.9% young men, early 20s to late 30s. I felt old. Obviously you don't have to wait until your retirement to get season tickets like you do in Green Bay. I rarely saw a family and maybe a total of 3 children the entire evening (before and after the game). Perhaps that was because…
  
• The game started at 9pm on a Sunday evening. I suppose this is actually one similarity because 9pm is prime time and apparently the French don't cling to their TVs on Saturday or Sunday afternoons to watch sports.
  

There was another sport in town for Andrew. It was watching after Eric who got tossed and turned in the excitement of it all and came out a bit hung over and a bit black-and-blue. On Friday night, Eric and I were both lit up like Christmas trees (see Le Bâteau Ivre) and that's when Eric took his first tumble, somewhere, and was left with a pretty bad scratch on his elbow. Rennes 1. The game Sunday started at 9pm but we had to be at the stadium by 6 to get the tickets. So for three hours, what was one to do? We spent the three-hour pre-game in a café/bar just across the street from the stadium where (granted, the steps were slippery) Eric took a tumble and so I yanked him up by his collar until he found his feet again. That dive brought Eric chin to railing. Rennes 2. The last episode was in the stands where we were pushed around like a heard of sheep. One wave landed Eric two or three steps down and resulted in a tear in his jeans and a torn up kneecap. Rennes 3. Probably around that same time, either someone lifted his cell out of his picket or it tumbled down the bleachers. Either way it was gone. Rennes 4.

But Eric still gets a grade of 20/20 (a perfect 100% on the French grading scale). It was Eric who went out and bought the croissants every morning this weekend, Eric who found the best restaurants, and Eric who kept the ball rolling at every moment. For me personally, the best thing was counting how many times Eric called his wife, Fabienne, throughout the weekend. Every time we did something great, or saw something amazing, his first impulse was to dial the phone and share it with her and his almost 5-year-old, Batiste (also known as Puic Puic). And his youngest, Aubin, was also on his mind all day and every day, especially when we visited three or four clothing stores for infants (the French dress their kids very well, no Garanimals here). At this very moment, trying to catch up on sleep in the train back down to Marseille, I'm sure he is regretting the loss of the phone, not because of its value or the list of numbers saved inside, but because he is cut off from Fabienne until this afternoon at least. A loss for Eric but proof that he's a 20/20.