[jdl22]

I agree with this. In 2000 I went to two matches before heading down to Spain for study abroad. I was visiting a foreign exchange student who lived with me my senior year of high school who lived in Stoke-On-Trent. At the time I was a Liverpool fan (now I basically only follow Sevilla, see avatar and location).

I went to Stoke City - Preston North End, which was a matchup of two of the better 2nd division (which is the third flight as you know) teams. The experience was incredible, small stadium with rabid fans and the match was amazing. Stoke went down 0-1 in the fifth minute or so and Stoke scored a goal just at the end of the second half and another during injury time to get the win.

Later I went to Liverpool - Middlesborough at Anfield. The experience there was good as well, big stadium and all that. The match was terrible however, Middlesborough were just looking for the 0-0 draw and got it by completely plugging the midfield. Also, Owen got hurt early.

It just so happened that I went to an amazing second division match and a boring premiership match, but in general I would highly reccomend going to a small club match as it's a wildly different experience. I was with my "brother" at the Liverpool match, when we were leaving the traffic leaving the city was completely congested with all the out of town fans leaving the match. The small clubs have much more local and hence diehard fans which makes for a different environment.

Having been to those matches as well as several Sevilla matches and watching Real Madrid - Manchester Utd. in the Champions League quarterfinal I think that watching big clubs in Europe is basically like watching professional sports in the US, although if you're like me and prefer their brand of football to ours then it's better. The point is that the feeling in the stadium is fairly similar. Going to the smaller clubs that don't have broad support in the country and world will give you a different experience you can't really duplicate here, except perhaps with smaller college sports teams or something like that.