During halftime of the Arsenal-Wigan Athletic match this morning, I saw a commercial for XLtravel.com, one of the sites that is part of West Ham's shirt sponsor XL.com. The commercial is aimed at American youth club teams who may want a football training holiday in England. The commercial depicts a head coach quizzing his players on some of the game's vocabulary differences between America and England -- rules versus laws of the game, grass versus pitch, soccer versus football. Then an announcer describes what the travel packages include, such as training with European coaches, playing local clubs and even attending Premiership matches. When the announcer finishes, it's back to the coach and his players:
"Now what team are you not supposed to like when you're at West Ham?"
"Millwall!"
"Excellent."
The XL commercials that I'm more familiar with depict American fans of the Premiership trying to support their teams and looking out of place. The one that I've seen the most shows a Man U fan wearing a Wayne Rooney shirt and watching a match on his laptop while in a bar. He cheers a Rooney goal while two other patrons look at him as if he's crazy. It's a benefit of the shirt sponsorship deal, I suppose, that West Ham got a mention in one of those commercials.
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