Murata

Ground: Stadio Fonte dell'Ovo

Visits: 1

Date: 2nd November 2012

Match: Murata - La Fiorita 2-1 (Campionato)

Attendance: 100 (approx.)

Normally there are one or two matches in Serie B on Friday evening in Italy but this week that was not the case. There was a match in San Marino though and being a new Länderpunkt for both Andreas and myself we decided to make the 400 km journey from Alice Bel Colle to San Marino. We were supposed to leave straight after breakfast but that was not to be the case. I felt a bit dizzy as we arrived back at the hotel around midnight but thought that was because of looking too much at the GPS as were we driving on curvy roads. Once in bed I couldn´t fall asleep and felt strange until I decided to take in some fresh air. I then realised how warm and sweaty I was. Two minutes later I was lying on the bathroom floor vomiting. I will not go into details but after 30 minutes my body was completely drained of fluids etc. I realised this was a bad food poisoning and after a shower I was back in bed. I was still unable to fall asleep and when my alarm buzzed at 09.00 I hadn´t slept at all during the night. My body felt shut-down but I somehow forced myself to eat two pieces of bread and drink a lot of water at breakfast. I was of course extremely tired and weak and we postponed the trip to San Marino for two hours. I decided to go, this was after all a new Länderpunkt, and as a passenger in the car I tried to rest as much as possible. Lunch was an apple and 2 litres of water. We arrived in San Marino around 5pm and at first we went to Olimpico, the ground where San Marino play their internationals. We then went to Citta di San Marino for some touristing but being tired I took it very easy. Although I had hardly eaten anything all day I wasn´t hungry but we went to a nice restaurant where I ordered tomato soup and tortellini. I ate the soup and most of the tortellini and for the first time this crappy Friday I felt some energy in my body. As we were leaving one of the waitresses looked at my and said something about "Mr Bean". I have heard this for the last 25 years (that I look like Rowan Atkinson) and she then said "Last summer Mr Bean tourist in San Marino". Smiles everwhere!

There are 15 teams playing in the San Marinese top league. They are divided into two groups and there is then a play-off to decide the league winners. The 15 clubs don´t have their own grounds, all league matches in San Marino are instead played at five different grounds. These grounds are randomly selected and the ground for the match between Murata and La Fiorita was decided to be Stadio Fonte dell'Ovo. It is a small ground with only one stand and an artificial pitch. The onle stand has 600 seats which I guess is more than enough for this league. It was free entrance and in total around 100 spectators showed up. A dog with a lot of energy also showed up (see picture below) and for most of the 1st half it ran along the glass wall (at the front of the stand) focusing on the ball. This was almost more entertaining than the match and the dog for sure had a good work-out. When it comes to the match La Fiorita was the better team but as they couldn´t score from their chances Murata somehow managed to win 2-1 and as I understand it they are now top of their group. We then started the drive back to Alice Bel Colle and by 03.10 we were back at the hotel. Yes, this was a long and hard day for me but at least this was my last match and on Saturday I was flying back home, thankfully!

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