IT was the police officers on every corner that made us start to wonder about this English soccer business.

My 12-year-old son, Walker, and I had become fans from this side of the Atlantic, watching matches from places like Liverpool and Manchester on Saturday mornings on satellite television. English football had come a long way, I knew, from the hooliganism and stadium disasters of the 1980s. The game had become big business, thugs and punks had become less of a problem, and crowd safety had been improved.

The images we saw on television seemed to reinforce that new image, with thousands of orderly fans cheering their teams of international stars in sweeping stadiums. It was attractive — so attractive, in fact, that Walker and I had decided to go over and experience it in person.

The idea had been simple enough. Americans go on sports road trips all the time — to the Final Four in college basketball, say, or to spring training in baseball. Why not an English football trip?

So here we were on a sunny afternoon in Southend-on-Sea, an hour’s rail ride east of London, walking toward Roots Hall, a scruffy old soccer ground that seemed to sprout like a tree fungus out of the row houses, pubs and fish-and-chips joints that surrounded it. We were about to watch Southend United, informally known as the Shrimpers, play Colchester, a nearby rival.

But if hooliganism was really dead, why did we see so many police officers during the 10-minute walk from the train station? And why, after we had jammed ourselves into cheap plastic seats in the sold-out, 12,000-capacity stadium and steeled ourselves with mealy cheeseburgers (football fare being a particularly vile subcategory of English food), did a squad of officers make a big show of filing into the grounds and installing themselves in a buffer zone between us and a stand of Colchester fans?

They were just being cautious, it turned out. Apart from plenty of off-color language and the occasional obscene gesture, there was no trouble at the game.

But there was plenty of excitement: crisp play (by the visitors, at least: they won, 3-0), exhortations by Southend’s mascot, Sammy the Shrimp, and at the half, a dance performance by the Blue Belles, the team’s version of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

And the singsong chants, delivered almost nonstop and only slacking off when it became clear that the home team was going to lose. We had heard football chants on televised matches, but they usually sounded fairly subdued. These were anything but. All and all, our weekend had gotten off to a rousing start.

The English soccer season runs from August to May, and with 92 teams in the top four leagues, several cup competitions and even the occasional international match, there is no shortage of games. Greater London, especially, is teeming with clubs — in the 2006-07 season there were six in the top division, the Premier League, alone, with matches usually played on Saturdays and Sundays. So with a little planning, it is possible to catch two or even three games in a long weekend.

We had our sights set on our favorite team, Arsenal, a Premier League squad with entertaining young players, including Emmanuel Adebayor, a striker from Togo, and the Catalan midfielder Cesc Fàbregas. The team has a style that can be intoxicating (the players often make beautiful passes) and infuriating (they often make one pass too many). On the weekend we chose, Arsenal was playing at home in North London against West Ham United, another London team.

A quick glance at the schedule had turned up the Southend-Colchester match the day before. This would give us a chance to see a bit of the countryside, and, these being second-division teams, a slightly less glamorous side of the English game. “Oh, that’s good honest football,” the concierge at our London hotel said when he heard of our Southend plans

While finding matches is easy, getting tickets can be trickier. The Southend match was no problem — a quick call to the team’s ticket office got us two for £30 total (just over $60 at the current exchange rate of $2.04 to the pound).

But Arsenal was another matter. It is one of the best teams in the Premier League, in a gleaming new facility, Emirates Stadium, just off the Piccadilly underground line, and its matches are almost always sold out. Ticket brokers charge what would come to about $500 for a ticket to a game against a so-so opponent like West Ham and much more for a match against a powerhouse like Chelsea or Liverpool. So I tried something that had worked in New York: Craigslist (www.craigslist.org). I posted a query on its London pages looking for two Arsenal-West Ham tickets, shamelessly mentioning something about my son’s burning desire to see Fàbregas play.

I got four responses by e-mail, including some from Arsenal season ticket holders. The least expensive offer was £100 a seat — a premium of roughly 50 percent over the face price, I figured, but still well below what a broker would charge. But we would have to make arrangements to buy the tickets once we got to London. It sounded legitimate, but what if it wasn’t? We decided to take the chance.

Our confidence was well placed. Once we arrived at our hotel, we called the ticket holder and arranged to meet him at Canary Wharf, the financial district down by the Thames. He pulled up in a car at the appointed hour and the transaction was completed. He even offered tips — our seats were in a corner, he said, and if we got there about a half-hour before kickoff we could watch the team warm up near us.

After our experience at Roots Hall, we weren’t sure what to expect at the Emirates. But it was a lot more genteel, as befits a complex that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and includes American touches like luxury boxes and giant video screens. There was a police presence, sure, but it was hardly intimidating. And there were plenty of cheers and some vulgar language, but the place was so big and open that the noise was hardly overpowering.

Which left us to concentrate on the game. At Southend we hadn’t really cared who won, but Arsenal was our team, and it was fighting to remain in the top four in the standings, which would guarantee it a spot in the elite pan-European competition next season. So when Arsenal’s goalkeeper, Jens Lehmann, gave up an easy goal near the end of the first half, we groaned along with everyone else.

Arsenal would get it back in the second half, we assured ourselves. And the Gunners, as they are known, almost did, putting relentless pressure on West Ham for most of what was an extremely exciting 45 minutes. Fàbregas hit the crossbar at one point, and Adebayor made a brilliant header that the goalkeeper barely managed to get a hand on. But the final score was 1-0.

We were disappointed that our team had lost, of course, but we consoled ourselves by thinking about all the good soccer we’d seen. And by noting a bit of history: this was Arsenal’s first defeat at its new stadium, and we’d been there to witness it.