CREWE, England — After 88 years and more than 3,000 matches, Harold Finch thought he had seen everything, but Sunday was a rare event.
The season is over for Finch’s beloved club, Crewe Alexandra, which plays in the third tier of English soccer, but an unusual guest arrived this weekend for a match at the town’s modest, brick-built Gresty Road stadium: the Qatar national soccer team. Awash in money and controversy, it was in Crewe to play Northern Ireland in an exhibition match.
The game was Qatar’s first match in Britain, the first played between Qatar and Northern Ireland and, most interestingly for Finch, the encyclopedic historian at Crewe Alexandra, the first involving two full international sides to be played in Crewe.