Brazil vs Argentina - Emirates Stadium, London - Sunday 3rd September 2006

Well, it seems that when you build a nice new stadium, every average team wants to play in it. Boring, dull teams like Brazil, with their dour band of supporters.

Of course, it was a pleasure to have a South American derby game like this in our new stadium, hopefully the first of many big box office draws to come. Brazil vs Argentina is one of the great games in world football, and even though it was a friendly, there was still guaranteed to be enough spice to make it interesting. The Brazilian fans heavily outnumbered the Argentina supporters, although most of the "Brazilians" were in fact English. Brazil are the Manchester United of international football - everybody with a passing interest seems to like them.

The game featured relatively little tackling, some good showboating (despite the non-appearance by Ronaldinho), and some excellent low-level niggle between the 2 sides. Brazil took the lead after 2 minutes, which settled the masses in the stadium. Throughout the game, Brazilian drummers kept the noise levels up - something we are unlikely to see at any Arsenal games here soon!

When Brazil scored their second, midway through the second half (here are some Argies waiting to kick off again), the game was effectively over as a competition. We got to see Julio Baptista towards the end, who got a great ovation, and looks like a mountain of a man - that should help with the "physical presence" problem when we play oop north.

The amusement carried on until the end, with a number of mini pitch invasions - by the final whistle it had become obvious that anybody who fancied it could get onto the pitch. Security was lax to say the least - hopefully it won't mean that we can't host games like this in future. The sun was even shining - must have been a Brazil game!