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FOXBORO, Mass. — Here’s a modest proposal the NFL should consider: Get the New England Patriots to play a regular-season game in Scotland. We can fight later over whether it should be played at Hampden Park in Glasgow or Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, but, really, this needs to happen.
Call it a home-and-home series of goodwill and great partying. As you may have heard, the Scottish fan presence in the Boston area during the World Cup has been so much more than interesting, so much more than entertaining.
History-making is what it’s been. In a region where everybody complains about everything and where it’s deep in the bones to limit rooting interests to the four major food groups of American professional sports — NFL (Patriots), MLB (Red Sox), NHL (Bruins) and NBA (Celtics) — the Scots have come to Boston and partied in such a way that locals want to party right along with them, and have.
The result: It’s been as though everybody everywhere went to the same high school.
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In no way is this a slight against any of the other countries that have played or will play World Cup matches at “Boston Stadium,” the temporarily-renamed home of the Patriots, Gillette Stadium. This includes Morocco, which emerged with a 1-0 victory over Scotland on Friday night here in Foxboro. Red-shirted Moroccans were appropriately spirited; they were cheering loudly before the match began, and they absolutely rocked the building just 72 seconds into the action when Ismael Saibari blasted a shot into the top-left corner past Scotland keeper Angus Gunn.
But the Scottish Invasion, from Boston to Foxboro to Providence, R.I. and everywhere in between, continues to be next level. If you’re from the region and you haven’t yet had a fun, memorable interaction with Scottish soccer fans, here’s hoping you’ll soon overcome your illness and be up, around and outside again.
From Scotland’s vaunted Tartan Army fan base bringing much-needed positive energy to Fenway Park on Sunday night to the throngs that have filled every bar in every neighborhood, the Scots have made themselves at home in a way that has offended nobody. Boston mayor Michelle Wu has jumped aboard the Tartan bandwagon, announcing Thursday a plan to establish Boston and Glasgow as “sister cities.” As if to illustrate she has political chops that would have made the legendary late Boston mayor James Michael Curley proud, Wu chose The Haven, a bar-restaurant in the city’s Jamaica Plain section, to make known her proclamation.
Scotland Fans drink Boston dry at World Cup
But this sister city business, if it is to be lasting, needs to be more than photo ops and Christmas cards. This is where the New England Patriots come in.
The Pats have been quite the international road warriors in recent years, playing games in London, Mexico City, and Frankfurt, Germany. On Nov. 15 of the upcoming season, they take on the Detroit Lions in Munich. But they’ve never played a game in either of Scotland’s two largest cities, Glasgow or Edinburgh.
In fact, no NFL team has played in Scotland. The closest the Scots have come to American football was the Scottish Claymores, an NFL Europe team that operated from 1995 to 2004. Joe Andruzzi, an offensive lineman who played on three Super Bowl-winning editions of the Patriots, was a Claymore in 1998. A cancer survivor, Andruzzi has teamed up with his wife, Jennifer, to help other cancer survivors through the Joe Andruzzi Foundation.
Scotland doesn’t appear to be an American football hotbed. A team in the International Arena League called the Glasgow Tartans folded last week after just two games, per the BBC. So what? This Scottish-Boston thing is quite real, and it would be a shame if it dissipated once the global backyard cookout that is the World Cup has packed up and finished its North American tour.
A Patriots game in Scotland, then, can keep alive this exciting new relationship between two fan bases while building a market for the NFL in a country that has had very little exposure to the sport.
Memo to the NFL: Keep the New York Jets out of this. The plan here is to build something, not send would-be Scottish football fans rushing for the exits.
Scotland midfielder Lewis Ferguson, speaking to the media after Friday’s loss to Morocco, talked of fan support — not just from the Tartan Army but also from their new friends from Boston.
“Amazing, like always,” Ferguson said, referring to the Tartan Army. “I think that the city of Boston has taken to the Tartan Army so well, and it makes you proud. It makes you proud to be Scottish. We didn’t give them the best start to the game today, if I’m honest, in terms of conceding so early on, and it kind of flattens it a little bit, but I thought in the second half they kind of fed off the energy from the players.”
Scotland’s John McGinn applauded the fans after his team’s 1-0 loss to Morocco at Boston Stadium. (Buda Mendes / Getty Images)
It’s easy to throw the foot soldiers of the Tartan Army into one pot and savor their collective joie de vivre. But that’s too easy. For it’s far more interesting to seek them out as individuals and chat ‘em up. If you’ve had that pleasure, you don’t need the education. If you haven’t, let’s meet the trio of David Cunningham, John Gilmore and Fast Eddie Burns, all from Scotland, who were at Friday’s match.
“My wife thinks I’m in Spain at a stag party,” said Cunningham, 46, from Airdrie, a town a little east of Glasgow. “But I sneaked to America for the World Cup.”
Does he worry his wife might read this?
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Cunningham said. “The world could end tomorrow.”
Gilmore, 65, who’s from Coatbridge, also east of Glasgow, made the point that this road trip hasn’t been limited to the roads leading to Boston and Foxboro.
“We’ve been to Dallas, to Memphis (Tenn.), and Memphis to Nashville (Tenn.), and Nashville to Gatlinburg (Tenn.), and Gatlinburg to Boston,” he said. “We get around.”
Fast Eddie is a Scotsman who hails from Jersey in the Channel Islands. He was asked why folks from Boston are so enamored with the Scots.
“Because we like to sing and make love,” Fast Eddie said.
Boston needs more of these guys and the like. Keep this relationship going. Get the NFL involved, and that’s how the Patriots will get to Scotland.
Here’s hoping Joe Andruzzi is recruited for the coin toss.