Hanoi T&T 1, Than Quang Ninh 0

Last night Noah and I traveled to Hang Day Stadium in Hanoi to watch a professional soccer match between Hanoi T & T and a team from a coastal city about 100 kilometers away.  The home team prevailed 1-0 and moved to second in the table with two games to play.  More importantly, it was fun to take in all the atmosphere and note how different things are at US sporting events: the fact that you can't buy a single Hanoi T & T shirt or scarf in any of the soccer shops in the city (including the 6 or 7 across the street from the stadium), the $2.50 ticket price to get in, the helmeted police officers making sure the (small) crowd behaved themselves, the almost complete lack of concession stand, and the ability to greet the players after the game as they walked out of the stadium right with the crowd.

The attendance was about 3,000, so in a stadium that seats 22,000, there were a lot of empty seats.  Here's the section of fans for the visiting team, which significantly inflated the attendance numbers.  They were loud throughout the game and even cheered when the other team scored.

The teams lining up the Vietnamese national anthem:

This is the fourth official, standing next to what I assume is the official scorer.  It seems a far cry from the Premier League or even MLS:

I finally figured out why they are called Hanoi T & T:

The home team had two different chanting and signing sections.  This is one.  I liked how there was a big picture of Ho Chi Minh watching over everyone:

Here's the other group of chanting supporters:

There were a lot of police at the game.  Here is an officer dragging a child back to their parents because the kid was standing too close to the field:

The concession stand consisted of a woman selling bottled cokes and little containers of popcorn.  Each cost 50 cents.

Honestly I don't know if they've had trouble at these games before, but for the size of crowd and their temperament, this seemed a little bit overkill.  These helmeted police officers were stationed around the track:

The tifo came out a couple of times during the game:

And the game itself?  It was pretty good.  Both teams had scoring chances, it was hard-fought, and the goal came from a very nicely-taken free kick in the 70th minute: