Last night, as mentioned, I returned to MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands, this time to catch Real Madrid v. AS Roma in both teams' final games this year over here in the U.S. before returning to Europe for the start of La Liga and Serie "A", respectively!
About an hour or so before the game was set to start, though, severe weather started rolling through the area, chasing everybody onto all of the many concourses inside MetLife Stadium, and stopping the "shuttle" trains running from Secaucus Junction; that was just about when I arrived, so after doing as much of a "lap" around the exterior/parking lots as I could before everybody practically got ordered to take cover from the storm, I then went inside and just wandered around the concourse along one of the 300-level sidelines - initially, it seemed like people were almost enthralled by the severity of the storm, but, after a few minutes of that not slowing down at all, everybody just seemed to start entertaining themselves in just about every other way possible... Shortly before 8 P.M., though, the weather cleared almost to the point where the sunset seemed to just barely be visible, and, indeed, that ended up being when security allowed everybody into the seating areas, although not without a little "TLC" being taken when it came to keeping the seats as dry as possible by then to be able to actually sit in!
Surely, though, things seemed a bit hurried immediately afterward, as the players only got in approximately five minutes' worth of "warmups", although I'm sure they managed to keep themselves loose in their respective locker rooms, and there were no "starting lineup" announcements at all, which seemed bizarre to me, given that, again, things seemed to get re-started shortly after 8 P.M., which was the originally scheduled start time for the game, so I'm sure all the usual "protocols" could've been followed, and things still wouldn't have been delayed very far beyond when they would've happened without the preceding severe weather delay!
One thing was apparent almost immediately, though, and that was how many more Real Madrid fans made the trip to the Meadowlands, just as there were many more Tottenham fans inside Red Bull Arena in Harrison this time last year, since, honestly, at least among all the various (western) European-based leagues, it seems as if the Italian league is the least popular of all of them over here, with the French "Ligue 1" possibly running a close second (second-to-last?) in terms of a "lack of awareness/popularity" outside their countries, with German Bundesliga/English Premier League teams and Barcelona/Real Madrid almost always either running even with each other, or outdrawing their French/Italian counterparts, over here in the U.S.!
Madrid definitely seemed to have taken more of an "advantage" of the delay, though, since, although Roma seemed to try to play "keep away" in the very first minute or so, it only took about another minute or so later for Madrid to open the scoring, and then, from there, Madrid effectively "flipped the script" on Roma, turning many "long ball" passes into quite dangerous scoring opportunities, while dis-allowing the same the other way, getting another goal only a few minutes later, although Roma definitely at least tried to "awaken" after that, not exactly copying Madrid's "long ball" strategy, but, rather, doing the opposite, keeping Madrid's defenders to the outside initially before sending a crossing pass approximately from one corner or the other into the 18-yard box, which, unfortunately for them, usually got cleared almost immediately by a waiting defender or two for Madrid, and, indeed, the first half ended with Madrid's incredibly early pair of goals still holding up, and with the team taking said 2-0 lead back to the locker rooms for the halftime break!
The second half started very similarly to how the first half ended, but, by the time both teams ended up making their "mass substitutions" that the International Champions Cup tournament uniquely allows, since, after all, it is merely the "pre-season" for those teams, everybody definitely became "wise" enough to the task at hand that the substitutes for both teams basically started just making all sorts of "dangle" and "deke" moves between opposing defenders, although Roma definitely seemed more "up to the task" then, as its defenders increasingly started cutting off Madrid's "lob" passes to the point where they could finally start creating more of the "corner" opportunities they kept trying to connect on in the first half, only to actually, you know, succeed by then up until Roma finally got on the scoreboard itself with only about ten minutes or so remaining in the game, although, after that, Madrid basically played "keep away" itself, preventing Roma from getting much more than a few corner opportunities, the last of which immediately got cleared away, signaling the end of the 2-1 win for Real Madrid, as well as both teams' time over here in the U.S. before starting their regular seasons over in Europe!
highlights (en Español)
In other news recently, the MTA, last month, announced its plans to finally get rid of the MetroCard "swipe" system that has graced the N.Y.C. subway system with its presence from 1992 through the present day, co-existing alongside tokens until mid-2003 to be continued through early next decade; ironically, the process truly "started" back in mid-2006, only to get rather abruptly stopped only a few months later:
It took the agency over a decade after that little "trial" to explore ditching the MetroCard and installing a more permanent "smart card" system for the buses/subways, which might not make the most sense initially, until you recognize that the MTA did pretty much the same thing with its first so-called "new technology trains", the "R110 A/B" sets of trains starting in 1992:
There's even a video mostly showing a "cabin" view of one of those trains:
Last October, the MTA signed a contract with Cubic Transportation Systems, makers of many similar "smart card" systems worldwide, like the SmarTrip card in Washington, D.C., the Oyster card on all Transport for London systems, the Opal card in Sydney, Australia, and many others, including, coincidentally, the PATH SmartLink, also in the N.Y.C. area, and the Freedom Card, used by the Delaware River Port Authority's PATCO system between Philadelphia and some of its closest suburbs just to the east of there in southern New Jersey; anyway, the MTA will "phase out" the MetroCard between 2019 (next year) and 2023, by which time the MetroCard will be fully de-activated system-wide, making way to whatever the MTA calls its "smart cards", starting its "smart card" trial between Grand Central, the famed "hub" building in mid-Manhattan, and the Barclays Center, the main entertainment arena in downtown Brooklyn mid-next year (2019), rolling out the new payment system to more, selected, stations the following year (2020), finally starting to de-activate MetroCard "swipe readers" the year after that (2022), before fully activating "smart card readers" and permanently discontinuing the MetroCard system-wide even later on in the "foreseeable" future, only keeping the new "smart card" system (2023)!
Now, though, I'd like to return to the early '90s once again (8/19/93, to be exact), to showcase the following "R110A" train run between E 180th and E 149th streets in the Bronx:
...also, the very first "revenue" (that is to say, with passengers) run of either of those train models, approximately two months prior (6/15/93); you'll notice upon viewing those videos that, even in such a short amount of time, there seemed to be many changes to those train models, quite possibly to "future-proof" them (at least from the MTA's point of view):
Anyway, you'll be seeing different sets of those things, along with the cities in which they exist, in a few weeks' time, in our little Madrid -> Paris -> Rome -> Barcelona trip next month, so, again, stay tuned for that once the time comes throughout the first half of next month!
