I just couldn't stay away
After 20-plus months in COVID-19-imposed exile from my favorite soccer-watching destination, my back-at-last trip to England unwittingly coincided with the spread of the Omicron variant
LONDON — Three Premier League matches in the space of a week — two of them precious away days. Three Bernardo Silva goals and nine points from those games for my beloved Manchester City. Upgrades to business class on my flights both ways. More dining, coffee and tabloid-newsprint gluttony that I should probably admit to.
My first trip abroad since early March 2020, right before the coronavirus pandemic ushered us all into a completely new and unwanted way of life, overflowed with postcard moments. Six days in Manchester, plus three in London, turned out better, frankly, than I had right to deserve.
However ...
To uphold one of the original pledges of this Substack, by taking you on my various trips with me as much as possible, I do have some warnings to share in case you've made your own plans for a long-awaited return to England for some soccer-watching, or if you're consulting this piece for some guidance for your first-ever trip to the home of football and a spectating experience truly unlike any in the world.
My reluctant assessment: Some will still find it too soon for international travel, given the logistical hurdles that must be cleared and the prospect of travel rules constantly changing while you’re in a foreign land, unless you are much better than me at compartmentalizing your stressing.
I know, I know: Who says waiting three months or six months will make things any easier? That certainly factored into my thinking to go now, since the learn-to-live-with-it phase of our new COVID-19 realities is well underway.
Just know that even for a veteran traveler — even when simply shuttling between two massive countries that share a (theoretically) common language — regulations and potential complications are constantly on your mind. At least they were for a professional worrier like me.
The truth: It can be difficult to focus exclusively on how delicious the football (and, yes, the food) is when gripped by thoughts of registering the required COVID-19 test results to go where you want to go and do the things you want to do ... or getting test results back fast enough.
To gain entry to England, based on my Nov. 26 departure date, travelers were required to order a home test kit and furnish both the airline and the UK government proof of purchase for that kit before flying out of the United States. On your second full day in England, you were required to record a negative test result and scan the test into an app to prove you had tested negative.
The run-around-the-room euphoria I felt after passing that first test was swiftly replaced by the dread stemming from the second test I would have to secure through a local provider after relocating from Manchester to London and come through it negative again to secure clearance to board my flight home. Even though I was already double-jabbed and boosted when I arrived, as the English say, I was likewise convinced the longer I was there that something would go wrong with one of these tests and lead to some sort of lengthy quarantine.
I've done a long quarantine before, so I'm sure I would have survived it just fine like I did for the first seven days of my stay in the NBA's Walt Disney World bubble. But I have to confess: Fear of the unknown and/or concern about things going haywire on foreign soil undoubtedly weighed on me. Shaquille O'Neal has been known to attribute such thinking to a "master of panic" personality, in a less-than-flattering reference to some of his past coaches, and I am certainly afflicted with strains of that condition. But I'd say fretting about travel setbacks is a pretty common affliction, especially during the holidays, so I just want to make sure that you're factoring all this in if you're heading overseas soon. There’s a lot going on and updated standards can be instituted in an instant.
Coach yourself to be ultra-flexible if you do go, because the goalposts were moving throughout my trip, creating another stress-inducing factor. The Omicron variant led to an immediate change in the UK in terms of the acceptable test for foreign visitors (home kits out; PCR test mandatory) on the day I arrived. Not really knowing whom to consult, I went ahead and used the kit I had preordered, administered my own Day 2 test and recorded the results in the app without incident — all presumably acceptable because I was already on the ground in Manchester when the new policy was announced.
The United States, soon after, announced that its citizens could only gain re-entry by registering a negative COVID-19 test result on the day before departure, shortened from the previous requirement of three days. Thankfully this was easier to achieve in a metropolis like London than it probably would have been anywhere else in Europe. I was allowed to take a free "lateral flow test" provided by the NHS at a train station near my hotel — even on a Sunday. I had my results back within an hour.
So much worked out in the end that I can gratefully report that my run as the (knock on wood) luckiest Yank in the history of football fandom continues. I love being in England to such a degree that the hassles were worth it, especially after some 20 months away from a country where these antiquated sports media platforms known as newspapers and the radio still delightfully matter, but it will certainly stay with me that it takes a good bit of adaptability to cope with all the new curveballs.
Guess it's rather handy that we all have more practice than we ever wanted doing that in so many other aspects of life these days.
The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter, with both free and paid subscriptions available, and those who opt for the paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of the league. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.
As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.
Game Recaps
1. Manchester City 2, West Ham 1 (Sunday, Nov. 28): The weather outside was frightful, making the Etihad Stadium surface look like it was poised to host one of the NHL's outdoor games, but the Lucky Yank took it all in from a covered seat. Fueled by adrenaline at my first City home game since November 2019, I wasn't even cold. The way City relentlessly dominated the ball in the snow only warmed the soul further. Even with Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish all sidelined, West Ham legitimately couldn't get it off the hosts for much of the first half no matter how unfriendly the conditions were. Stirring start that I felt five or 10 times more fortunate to witness after hearing about the Dallas couple that, like me, traveled all the way from North Texas to nearby Burnley to see Tottenham and wound up getting snowed out.
2. Aston Villa 1, Manchester City 2 (Wednesday, Dec. 1): One of the true blessings of my sporting life was meeting a Mancunian named Martin Dodd in the mid-1990s when I was just starting out as an NBA reporter and living in Southern California. Martin is a Wythenshawe lad who ended up building a career in the States as a representative of the Targus computer accessories company. He and I became fast pals, as two of the few proud City fans in Southern California back then, and Martin's brother and close friends back in Manchester duly adopted me as family when I started making regular trips over in 1996. The result is an absolute cheat code when it comes to getting to away games as such a faraway resident: Martin's older brother Alan and his best friend Barry Gate have been going to City's games since the 1960s. They can always rustle up an extra ticket and, on the much-anticipated occasion of Jack Grealish's return to Villa Park, I had the honor of being ferried to Birmingham by Barry and his wife Pam. (I told you: Luckiest Yank in history.) Grealish got on the pitch for only the last eight or so minutes — I really didn't understand why Pep Guardiola waited so long to bring him on — but it was an emotional night at one of England's most regal old grounds. Away games are the absolute best because there is room for only a few thousand fans from the visiting team — typically the most passionate supporters. The nonstop singing from the traveling City customers, as well as some of the banter between the two sets of fans, was vintage. The down-low seat was even better thanks to a section for away supporters at Villa that provides such a good vantage point.
Inevitable taunt from the Villa fans in a nod to the European Cup they won in 1982 before it became the Champions League: "You'll never sing that, you'll never sing that, Champions of Europe, you'll never sing that.”
Taunts in reply: "He left ‘cause you're sh-t. He left ‘cause you're sh——t, Jack Grealish, he left ‘cause you're sh-t."
And a cruel rewrite of Phil Foden's song that pays homage to Mancunian roots: "He's one of our own, he's one of our oh-oh-own, Jack Grealish, he's one of our own."
3. Watford 1, Manchester City 3 (Saturday, Dec. 4): I hadn't been to Vicarage Road since the late 1990s to watch one of my favorite all-time players (Ronny Rosenthal) when he was playing for Watford. The long-awaited return was a joy thanks to two more goals from the unstoppable Bernardo Silva and more memorable singing. Seriously: How short is the list of players in world football right now who are playing better than the multipurpose Portuguese star Silva? Just like at Villa, there was a stretch when City's fans must have sung the new Rúben Dias song for nearly 15 minutes straight. As a result, I can't stop singing it in public under my mask, on planes, etc. (Video below is from the crowded concourse at Villa and, beyond the wonderfully catchy tune, I think all that traffic lets you know why it felt safest to head right to my seat outside upon arrival.)
Standout Sights
🏀 The New York Dubs: One of my favorite pastimes while traveling is trying to spot NBA gear that is, shall we say, less than official. But I definitely did not expect this: The well-regarded Japanese retailer Superdry, which has numerous stores throughout England, is carrying some new jackets that employ NBA team nicknames that had me doing double-takes even if they weren't really intended to be designed to be an NBA product. With the Pistons jacket, at least, its colors are somewhat close. A Warriors jacket with a Knicks color scheme, by contrast, is (as they say) a choice. I realize, once again, that this isn't being marketed by Superdry as an NBA item. These pictures were nonetheless mandatory.
☕ Best Coffee Presentation: I am not really as high maintenance as this picture suggests. But if you are going to serve me a cappuccino on a wooden plank, like Pot Kettle Black in Manchester does or WatchHouse in London as shown here, I’m certainly not going to turn it down.
🥩 Surprising food find: Perhaps in honor of Silva and Dias, I stumbled upon a Portuguese place called Gabriel's before the Watford game and was treated to an ultra-thin Bitoque steak garnished with an egg (shown below) that was absolutely scrumptious. (This story is going to end up being crazy long, so I decided against adding more photos of some of the other delectable treats I found on the trip, like the luscious scrambled eggs with smoked salmon at PKB, Turkish coffee and an Argentinean steak sandwich stand called Porteña in the famed Borough Market and some Belgian chocolate gelato I definitely didn’t need after a week of gorging. I will never, ever understand how the notion persists that the food is bad in England. There is delightful fare all over the place, whether it’s modern British or if you’re into Spanish, Italian or Indian cuisine, and I promise: No one forces you, just because you’re in their country, to eat the scary stuff like black pudding, mince pies, mushy peas, Spotted Dick, etc.)
🇷🇴 Tradition that could only excite nerdy me: Seemingly every time I've seen City play somewhere other than Manchester in recent years, there's a Romanian grocery store near the stadium in question. The streak started with City's run of four consecutive League Cup triumphs at Wembley (three of which I attended) and it happened again last week at both Villa and Watford as the enclosed pictures detail. Both sides of my family originate from Romania and my late father escaped the Communist rule there at age 20 after surviving the first six or so years of his life either in a Nazi concentration camp or in hiding waiting for repatriation to Romania. Every time I find one of these stores, I can't help but imagine what he would have said had he been with me, since Romanian goods aren't exactly plentiful in America.
🏀 Colleagues like Brian Windhorst and Tom Haberstroh have had fun over the years mocking me for my obsession with glass-bottle Cokes. If you've ever heard any of their podcasts roasting me for this quirk, you'll understand why I felt compelled to document the surprising availability of glass-bottle Cokes at England's answer to Barnes & Noble. The temperature needs to be turned way down to chill the bottles better … but still: Classy touch, Waterstones.
🏀 Any time I catch a glimpse of anything NBA-related on my travels, especially in a country like England in which the NBA has such a limited presence, I rush to document it:
Mailbag Notice
It is time, friends, for another mailbag. Send your questions to marcstein@substack.com. We will naturally focus on NBA topics, but the floor is also open if you want to ask about international travel, coffee, life’s enduring mysteries, or whatever.
Last Word(s)
The veteran Manchester City correspondent Ian Cheeseman does post-match video blogs to capture life on the road for fans who travel up and down the country (and throughout Europe in simpler times) to follow the club. For a vivid taste of the Watford match, with some views shared by yours truly, check out Ian’s latest Forever Blue video. It’ll provide a good taste of what a Premier League away day is like … whether or not you’re a City fan.
Great read! Curious how you became a City fan so long ago. Definitely the kind of thing you would have to be born into in the 90's
loved this... had the reuben dias song in my head all weekend.