A Touchdown for American Football in Poland

It’s no secret that the most common kind of football in Europe is the kind that actually requires regular use of the feet, and which actually forbids any use of the hands unless one is the lonely goalkeeper.  Nonetheless, American style football is starting to show its pigskin face recently in Europe.   In Poland their league has grown enough to move their championship over to the national stadium, which had 25,000 people in attendance in July.  This weekend the national stadium in Warsaw played host to the Euro-American Football Challenge.   The organizers welcomed a group of scrappy young American footballers to challenge the best of the European clubs.  Twenty thousand plus curious fans turned up, as well as Solidarity leader and former Polish President Lech Walesa who gave a lively opening speech and successfully carried out the coin toss. 

I was lucky to be part of the large turnout as well.  After scoring a free 50 yard line seat, I hopped on the bus and  moved myself to the stadium.  After finding my seat I noticed that it was a pretty noisy crowd for a country relatively new to the sport.  The announcers were lively, and even seemed to be dropping explanations about the sport to help iron out some of the nuances for the newcomers to American football.  

The challenge itself was quite close throughout the first half, with the score even at seven.  However, shortly into the third quarter the challenge fell apart, with a few too many costly turnovers by the European side.  Because of this, the American team quickly capitalized on the turnovers and scored a few touchdowns against an apparently weaker and less experienced European team.  Despite it nearly being an Olympic  'dream team' type blowout, the European team did manage to slow the American momentum towards the end of the fourth quarter to avoid a complete disaster.  The American team won 34-7.  Regardless, the most notable thing about the event was size of the enthusiastic crowd who nearly all stayed until the end of the match.  Despite the lopsided result, it could be the winning touchdown for the growth of the sport in Poland and in Europe.