British fans oohed when Miami Dolphins running back Jesse Chatman got creamed by what seemed like the entire left side of the New York Giants’ defense. They aahed when Giants receiver Plaxico Burress dropped a pass in the end zone.
They showed respectful appreciation for the strong arm of New York quarterback Eli Manning, even though he had a subpar day. And they cheered lustily when the Dolphins’ 39 cheerleaders strutted their stuff.
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The NFL was hoping to strut its stuff Sunday at Wembley Stadium, the spiritual home of English soccer, with the first regular-season game played outside North America. But the result was a sloppy 13-10 Giants victory on a rainy afternoon.
All 88,000 seats in the new Wembley Stadium — the old Wembley was torn down in 2003 — were sold out within hours of going on sale in March. While plenty of American expatriates attended, most of the crowd was local.
“There is no way American football will be bigger than soccer,” said Gary Rickett-Ambrose, 24, an auditor who has the name of the second-division soccer team he supports, Sheffield Wednesday, tattooed on his arm. “Soccer is the national game.
“But this is a novelty, a special occasion, and when you see one of those 50-yard touchdown passes — that’s something that will really catch the imagination over here.”
Playing outside the U.S. was certainly a novelty for the athletes. Almost all needed to apply for their first passports to play in this game, and it was up to Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who lived in London until he was 7, to educate his teammates about the mystique of Wembley.
“I really couldn’t point to a stadium in America that has the significant heritage that Wembley has,” he said at a news conference. “It’s a dream come true for me.”
This was not the NFL’s first visit to Wembley. In 1983 the Minnesota Vikings and the St. Louis Cardinals played an exhibition game in the old stadium. Since then, seven other NFL preseason games have been played here.
But Sunday’s game was an important moment for the NFL, which is trying to determine how to take its game global.
After pulling the plug this year on the six-team NFL Europa and recognizing that a diet of exhibition games failed to satisfy its increasingly savvy international fan base, the NFL has committed to playing two regular-season games a year outside the U.S. for the next five years.
“It’s bringing our best product to fans here and in other international cities,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in London last week. “Our goal is to translate America’s obsession into the world’s passion. Sunday is just the beginning.”
The NFL knows it can’t go head to head with the worldwide popularity of soccer, but it believes its “product,” as it insists on calling the game, has its place in the global market.
Mark Waller, the league’s vice president for international operations, said his goal was to see an NFL team based outside North America by 2020.
“I don’t see why this couldn’t be the case,” he said. “In this day and age you don’t need an indigenous population that plays the game massively” to build an enthusiastic fan base.
What you do need is TV, and in Britain, at least, the NFL fills the airwaves. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Cable is carrying about 130 games this season, and the British Broadcasting Corp. will show the 2008 Super Bowl live for the first time.
Steve Elliott, a 29-year-old elementary school teacher from Liverpool, said he got hooked on the American game through television and bought a ticket to Sunday’s game to sample the real thing.
“It’s different,” he said as the uneventful game slogged to a close.
He enjoyed the cheerleaders, he said, but not the long pauses for the commercials. The American gamed lacked the full-throated, stand-and-yell-your-lungs-out-for-90-minutes madness of a soccer game.
“It’s not quite as intense as I thought it might be,” he said.
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