Public transportation is an integral part of the sport

The fan experience in Colombia has gotten better as public transportation has improved, but there's still a long way to go. AP

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BOGOTA, Colombia -- I've never set foot in the U.S., so I'm not sure if this statement will hold true there. But I stand by it as applied either to my native England or South America, my base for the last 14 years:

It's impossible to have a complete understanding of the cultural phenomenon of soccer unless you know how to get to the stadium using public transportation.

The game is a celebration of urban collective space. Thousands of people -- sometimes the equivalent of the population of a small town -- make their way across the city to watch a big game.

Their experience of the event is not limited to the 90 minutes playing time. It starts the moment they set off to the stadium, and only ends when they make it back home.

If the journey to and from the game is unsafe, or unpleasant or badly organized, more people will choose to stay at home. Bad public transportation is one of the biggest defeats soccer can suffer.

I'm writing this from the Colombian capital, where I've just come back from watching local heroes Millonarios cruise to a 3-0 victory over Deportivo Pereira.

It's almost seven years since I last went to a game in this city, the final of the 2001 Copa América when Colombia beat Mexico by a goal. That was a huge party, but this time I see that Bogotá now has something else to celebrate: an improvement in public transportation.

It consists of a system of elongated buses with special lanes, called the Transmilenio, and it includes a station right outside the El Campín stadium. The system got me from the city center to the ground quickly -- and to my surprise, was just as swift on the way back.

Crowds tend to arrive at the stadium at staggered times before kickoff, and then leave all at once after the final whistle -- I had thought the Transmilenio would be unable to cope with the flow at the end of the game. But the organization was good, and I made it out quickly.

Perhaps I got lucky. An article the same day in the local press complained that traffic flow in the city is getting slower, and that the Transmilenio is already operating at a breaking point.

It makes sense. This kind of system has proved successful in Curitiba, a relatively small Brazilian city, but a place as big as Bogotá needs a subway. A Transmilenio bus can carry a couple hundred passengers. A subway train can take more than 1,000.

My next stop on this little tour of Colombia will be Medellín, very proud to be the only city in the country that can boast a subway system -- with a station handy for the Atanasio Girardot stadium.

Then comes Cali, where one of the city's big teams are about to make history. Deportivo Cali will soon open its own stadium -- incredibly enough, the first privately owned soccer ground in Colombia, where the stadiums are usually owned by the local authority. This will be a proud moment for a club that has a reputation for sound administration and, in the long-term at least, it should give it a financial boost.

But first it will have to fill its new home -- which, of course, means people will have to be able to get there. The stadium is located way out of town. I have been to Cali a few times in recent years, and from what I recall its public transportation is far from adequate. After the initial euphoria wears off, making the trip out to the new stadium might try the patience of some of the club's supporters.

I recall my early years in Rio de Janeiro, when I was too broke even to think about getting a taxi. The Maracanã stadium has a subway station right outside. But, and this was a source of constant fury for me, it was closed on Sundays and shut down before the big evening games ended. So from the point of view of the soccer fan, it was next to useless. Thankfully, this has now changed, though the subway system remains woefully inadequate for a city as sprawling as Rio.

So in those days you had to leave by bus. This could be tricky. Some of the bus companies, fearful of damage, held their fleets in the garage for some time after the game. Of those buses which were running, many refused to stop. Making it back home was a bit like a tropical version of Napoleon's retreat from Russia.

As I was hanging around at the bus stop, I would see the local press speed by, in plush cars with a driver. In their insulated little world, the deficiencies of public transportation didn't appear to figure among the priorities of their reporting, and I saw this as a dereliction of duty.

Memories like that explain why I made a point of checking out the Transmilenio in Bogotá. Going to the game by public transportation helps you understand the experience of the fan, and also tells you a great deal about how a government treats its citizens -- and that's an important story in anyone's book.