AS Monaco vs. Bayer Leverkusen

I've wanted to go to a football game for quite some time now, but just haven't gotten around to it. Last year, thanks to a rather impressive lineup (which included James Rodriguez and Falcao, who sadly both left them team after last season though), AS Monaco made it to the Champions League. So I sort of randomly noticed on their web page that they were playing Bayer Leverkusen today, so I decided to go for it, and got three tickets (for me, my colleague Ilario and dad).

We headed off to Monaco well and early, 2 1/2 hours before the match, to give us enough to time to have dinner before the big game. No problems with traffic, nor parking (parking is never a problem at Monaco!), so we arrived with some time to spare to have dinner in the port near the stadium. We had nice salads at an Italian restaurant (finding it rather amusing that they're not allowed to serve alcohol since it's a game night - that's Monaco for you!).

For the game then. First disappointment - there wasn't much of an atmosphere. The stadium is big enough to host 18,000 people (which is about half of Monaco's population) - so apparently the stadium is pretty deserted on most match nights. This time wasn't an exception - I reckon a third of the seats at most were occupied. Mind you, the AS Monaco fans did actually make quite a lot of noise relative to their meagre numbers...

The game itself wasn't much of a classic either. Bayer dominated the first half, without being able to create many scoring chances, with Monaco playing very passively (unfortunately we were also at the wrong end of the pitch). So it was a goalless draw at half-time. Monaco were a bit more active in the second half, and indeed managed to clinch the game winner in the 61st minute after a well-taken shot by Moutinho, which took the goalie by surprise after a deflection off a Bayer defender. Pretty efficient finishing from Monaco - one scoring opportunity, one goal.

So not a great classic of a game then, but still, an experience! Next time I'll probably go see Nice place though - the atmosphere should be a bit better at their new stadium.