Super Bowl / Ralph Ellis / 22 January 2009 / Leave a comment

We're all getting excited about the Super Bowl here at Betfair, so when we heard that Reading's American goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann was the man to talk to about the Gridiron game we took a trip to the Madejski Stadium to find out.

Hi Marcus - the Reading lads tell us you've had Super Bowl parties most years so is there another planned next week?

For once it's a bit more low key, actually. I've got some buddies coming over from the States so I'm sure we'll have a pretty good get-together. It's always better when you have all the Americans over. There was one year when I just watched the game with my wife and half way through decided I had training in the morning and I couldn't take the late night! This year's game being in Tampa makes it easier with the time difference for the East coast rather than West.

It's a surprise final, Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals

But it will be pretty interesting. Steelers have to be favourites but Arizona will carry a lot of momentum for how they've come into it. They've been the surprise package of the whole season. I could have named at the beginning of the year 15 teams to be in the Super Bowl before I got to them.

Is that a good or bad thing?

I think it's kinda cool. It's good for the league to have other teams do well. People talk about the game over here: "Oh the top four that's it, outside of that what's the point?" So it's kinda nice the way they do the draft picks and try to make the league competitive. It's restrictive with the salary caps, though, I don't know if I'd like that if I was playing!

There still are always sides that dominate though

Yes, but none of the big teams have done well this year. Maybe that's not fair on Pittsburgh because if you look back historically they were as good as anybody. They'd be the first to win the Super Bowl six times, so that's pretty big. But you've got to go back to the late 70s for their real top era. I suppose it's a bit like Portsmouth being in the FA Cup final last season. They'd been big before but not for a long, long time.

How hard or easy is it for you to follow the NFL season back home?

Sky Sports do a pretty good job. I keep in touch pretty close, although not as much as the first couple of years I was over when I was maybe a bit homesick and was always on the internet searching stuff. This season's been really hard because my team has sucked and you tend to lose interest then! That's Seattle Seahawks, by the way. My best buddy at home and my brother in law have both got season tickets and it's been just so painful talking to them! I didn't realise how English I'm becoming until last week when I went in to training and the lads were asking what I thought of the game on Sunday and I started talking about Tottenham. They were going: "No, the Super Bowl play-offs, didn't you watch it?"

Did you ever play?

Yeah, for a couple of years at Junior High from when I was 13 or so. I grew up playing baseball and soccer, and then when I got into Junior High they had the football team. But it became quite a chore after school going to practice, getting home, having something to eat and then soccer practice. It got too much. I was such a better soccer player than anything else anyway. And I kept getting stuck on the line which wasn't that much fun. Have you seen how many guys they have waiting to play instead of on the field at any one time?

We suppose you wanted to be the quarter back. They are the glamour guys...

Oh yes, everybody wants to be that guy! And not only because it's the glamour role, you also get to have a longer career. You look at Kurt Warner who is the Cardinals' guy. How long has he been around? Ten years or so at the top. Quarter backs do seem to go on a bit longer, it's a position where experience and reading defences is so critical. You do tend to get better with age. It's not dominated by speed and power where in other places speed is everything.

It's amazing to have that long a career given the ferocity of hits...

Sure, it's a rough game and I think the average life span is about 18 months. It's tough for the guys because in the NFL contracts aren't guaranteed, which is even more remarkable. You can sign a four year deal but they can cut you, so that changes things drastically as well.

It was a good career decision to be a goalkeeper and not play NFL then!

You bet!

The NFL guys earn better money than even our top Premier players though, don't they? Do the Americans resent it like some people seem to here?

It's not much different. Most people don't have a problem paying a person a lot of money, it's only when they start acting like spoiled little children that people really start to complain. No-one complained too much, especially not Man Utd fans, about Ronaldo earning 115k a week or whatever, and compare that to American standards it's not that much money, but when he goes and crashes a Ferrari and then they see him driving a Bentley people are going: "Whoa that's not fair." But it's the way it is. It's just the same in America. Look at someone like Brett Favre for Green Bay, what a professional he is, I don't know how much he's made but nobody ever complains. But when guys do stupid stuff like Michael Vick did it's different.

Your season's going pretty well so far?

Well promotion has been our goal from the beginning, and we are playing pretty well. We've just had a couple of good results to get into second place and that puts us in control. But we've also got a big game coming up with Wolves next week that will be a test, especially without Liam Rosenior who got sent off and will be suspended. That will tell us a lot.

Thanks for your time and we've a free £50 bet for your favourite charity

I'll add that to the Royal Families fund that the wives and girlfriends run here at Reading - and I'm going to back Pittsburgh to win by more than 13.5 points at [3.25]