We have had a busy few days and have found ourselves in London. In  the past three days, we have toured many stadiums, including  Manchester United’s famous Old Trafford, historic Goodison Park of  Everton, and Liverpool’s modern Anfield. With rivalries running deep  between these clubs, it was interesting to hear many perspectives and jabs at one another. Walking down the street from our Everton tour to our Liverpool tour, our Liverpool guide made their rivalry evident. He made comments about the Everton souvenir bags our classmates were holding. Each of the stadiums was very different, but all holding a longstanding history of tradition and success.

Don’t worry, we are not just touring football stadiums, we went to  the National Football Museum as well! Wednesday’s class covered the  development of football in Manchester and a discussion on  coaching methods. We discussed how lessons learned through sport  translate to the bigger picture, namely an individual’s character.

On Thursday, at the end of a long day in Liverpool, we also had  the opportunity to go to the Beatles Museum. We had a class to discuss  individual points of interest and reflection from our first few days. Some highlights were influential players and managers in history, the Munich air disaster, and inclusion (or lack  there of) of women’s football in England. We concluded  with a discussion of our reading on statistics in football and their  ability to predict success.

We departed from Manchester this morning to load our bus to London.  On the way, we took a little detour to play a little footy ourselves.  St. George’s Park, the English FA, is the home of all the English  National Teams. After a tour of the state-of-the-art facilities, we took a quick peak into a rehab facility to see a professional player working with trainers. We had the unique opportunity to train with coaches from the FA. They ran us through a brief session and we critically considered their coaching methods and mechanics. We took away a lot of valuable lessons. As Sir Bobby Robson once said, “some of the  goals were good, some of the goals were skeptical.”

Cheers!

Claire and Meredith