I wanted to be around crazy Italians for their first World Cup match and managed to get the tip off from my mate Chief. He said his buddy owns an Italian restaurant in Soho. I jumped on the subway and made my way down to the hip and trendy part of New York World Cup pub viewing. In this little area of downtown New York you have some of the smartest bars to watch the World Cup. West Broadway between Broome St and Grand St has all the great soccer nations represented from Brazil, Argentina and France. This is one area where you will see super hot model chicks cheering for their team. It can be a lot prettier than the fellas in a 3rd avenue Irish bar. There are moments later in the tournament when you will need those guys in their Irish pubs. You have to find a balance between venues at the World Cup.

Chief’s restaurant selection for the Italy V Paraguay match led me to Via Dei Mille. I turned up 15 minutes before kickoff and got a seat easily. The waitress moved gracefully and I was sucking on a Peroni before I wiped the excitement-driven beads of sweat from my forehead. The crowd was made up of Italians from Italy, Italians from Jersey and Italians from Brooklyn.

The atmosphere was party-like until Paraguay scored the first goal and the Italians went quiet. Luckily they equalized. They went crazy, with the owner of the place, Giuseppe, jumping on his own bar and screaming at the top of his voice. It’s his bar, he can do what he wants.

The next Italy game is this Sunday at 10 am against New Zealand. This place would be a great venue to get in early for brunch. And if you wanted to turn it into an all day session you would just roll through that whole neighborhood to watch the following Brazil match.

Here is some video from the Via Dei Mille…

It was damn hard last night to find a Mexican joint to show the opening match of the World Cup – Mexico v Sth Africa; the goal was to find a Mexican restaurant full of Mexicans. I rang the El Coyote restaurant in Queens which said they were going to open late in the day to show the French v Uruguay game. Not much Mexican patriotism from a Mexican restaurant. I got caught in a rain shower on the streets of New York last night with a Nicaraguan and he told me to get myself to East Harlem and around 116th st to watch the match.

I made my way to East Harlem and found a Mexican restaurant called the El Paso. It was empty but they had some waitresses walking around in Mexican jersey’s and some Mexico T-Shirts. I later found out the girls in the T-Shirts were from the Dominican Republic but had been to Cancun once and claimed that made them Mexican. If that was the case I was more Mexican than them as I had been there three times.

The El Paso restaurant had about ten people on their patio out back to watch the games. They had all the flags of the World Cup teams on the wall which looked quite pretty until I realized they didn’t have an Australian flag. Somehow they had managed to purchase a New Zealand flag. Where the hell did they find that?

Out on the patio they had their HD TV going but somehow Telemundo doesn’t come in too well on the old HD so it was a bit fuzzy but bearable. There was only one Mexican watching the game with us. He managed to seduce the waitress into letting us all drink beer at Half time. The Mondelo’s started coming out. A delicious beer that I proceeded to smash for the second half which was tense as Mexico had played good but Sth Africa was on top with an exciting goal. All us non-Mexican’s on the bandwagon were depressed when the Sth Africans scored. Mexico finally managed to score but a somber atmosphere after the match.

A good start to the World Cup and a venue that will deliver as the event rolls on. More Mexicans next time and at least some old guy wearing sombrero would be nice. Will be back there for the next game! El Paso on 116th st btwn 2nd and 3rd Ave.

My excitement of watching the match alone…..WATCH….

I love my Mexican beans……great food.

I caught up with Roger Goodell at the red carpet for the great new movie The Blind Side. Goodell was in good spirits after fining his friend Bud Adams for giving the Buffalo Bills fans the finger. I should say fingers as there were two of them which was pretty impressive for an 87 year old man to be flicking the bird.

CLICK on the video below….

Here is old Bud giving the salute….