Description: I never made it down to The Vet (Veteran's Stadium) for a football or soccer match, but I had been there for baseball. It wasn't my favorite place to see a game. I can only imagine what it was like for football, and I can't picture it being that good.
In early August 2003 I was however on-hand when the new football stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, opened. The first event was a "friendly" exhibition soccer match between two famed European teams: Manchester United and Barcelona FC.
"The Linc" as the locals call the place reminds me a lot of Gilette Field in Foxboro, MA. From afar, seeing the ramps up to the upper decks made me think they were one and the same building. Even inside, there are places cut out in the corners that are in the same locations. There's a structure that looks a little like the Gilette Lighthouse in one endzone.
That all said, it's still a nice venue. Two huge jumbotron screens are in the stadium, one in each endzone. The seats above one of the screens remind me of the new seats above the Green Monster at Fenway Park. That's because the seats are just above it, with nothing but the wall and screen below. Those seats look like fun and like they give a great full-field view. My seats were along one of the sidelines, and they also offered a good shot of all the action. In a brouchure the Eagles handed out before the game, it was stated that the lines were closer to the field and sidelines (undoubtably true) and that a much larger percentage of seats are along the sidelines.
The team/designers made a couple of mistakes though. Two vital things were left out of the plans. First was a flagpole. It took the people around me and myself until the last verse of the National Anthem to realize that the flag was hanging from the rafters way behind us. They also built the place without a single water fountain, meaning if you need a drink, you have to buy it. By the time I returned to the link in late September, they had fixed this problem.
While we're on the subject of drinking, I was disturbed that they were selling alcohol all the way through the event. The venders were hawking beer in the 86th minute of a 90 minute game. I hope this isn't an insight into the minds of the Philadelphia sports authority, because in a city notorious for some of the meanest fans in the country, buying a beer on the way to the car is not a good idea.
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