Opening night and first game

OK, here's the picture. Everywhere you look, there are teams - and these aren't even the team that are in the parade! 800+ teams in this tournament.
Several from each of the 50+ countries are selected to parade through the town and are cheered by the towns folk. It's bedlam in the stadium as they arrive. I had terrible position for photos, but had a lot of fun. If you look in the last few photos, you'll see the US flag above the crowd. There were four or six USA teams chosen to march and Kelix was one of them. Tom and Jim may have some much better shots than these of our team, but, hopefully, the bedlam shows up in mine...

This is Brazil, matching hats, jackets and pants - all in white, quite the sharpies!

Jumbotron, Danish rock band, announcer who spoke several languages, this was an event.

This is the Fortuna Clubhouse - a top youth - adult soccer program in Denmark. They are just one of five or more club houses that I counted in Hjorring alone. Because they are in Hjorring, they help host the tournament. Because of this, when they're not playing, they're working. Some members of the club worked in the Dana Cup food tent and served food to the other players in the tournament. The food tent serves 4000 meals per hour!

Dig the white stripes on the lawn in front of the club house!

The next day, we played our first game against a very good Sweden team. It was a loss of 2-0, but it showed that we could play with them and hang in there. Each game was like that. A 2-1 loss to the eventual bracket winners and a 1-1 tie that got us a better seed in the B bracket playoffs. Unfortunately, that did not go so well. It was a loss of 3-0. Here are pics from the first game, I know I missed some kids...
Meet together and then the game is on.

Spirits are not too bad after the game. The guys had fun and knew they could play!

Off the the bus and back to the school.