Well, the football season’s over, and with no summer cup tournaments to bother with this year, this seems an appropriate time to look back at how it all ended.
Manchester United won the Premiership, ending the three-year London teams’ grip on this prize quite emphatically, with the job done and dusted with a few games to spare. Bloody good job as well, as they were showing signs of flagging towards the end, and by the time the FA Cup final came, I’d say we were a spent force. Ditto Chelsea really, who more or less had kept with us all the way, being knocked out of European Cup at semi-final stage by Liverpool. These campaigns took their toll on both United and Chelsea, as both the league game and the final between the two were dull lifeless affairs. As it is, Chelsea did do a sort of "double", winning the League Cup and FA Cup, but they and we know that the Premiership is what really matters - never mind “new Wembley”.
United won the League in some style, with the victory over Citeh at their Council House being the point where we knew it was game over for Mourinho. Frankly though, I reckon if it hadn’t had been for sublime skills of Ronaldo and the rock that was Vidic in defence, we’d have been in deep doo-doo. But respect to the likes of Giggs, Rooney and especially the mercurial talent of Mr Paul Scholes, who was back to his best after a season and a half where we thought he’d lost it completely. Good to see Michael Carrick fitting in as well, though he went a bit off the boil towards the end – I suppose you don’t get used to playing so many games when you’re at Tottenham. And it looks as if the intention is there to stay at the top, with early Summer signings made already to bolster the team for the season to come.
The bin-dippers ragged their way to another European Final, playing against the team that quite rightly knocked us out in the semis, AC Milan. And yet again the Final was another dull affair, with the subdued Scousers outplayed by a below par Milan, falling foul of a couple of goals from Inzaghi. They attempted a late comeback with a goal (at last) from Kuyt but to no avail. The trophy winged it’s way to Italy, rather than England, which at semi-final stage you couldn't see happening as three of the four teams still involved were English. Milan, remember, at the start of the season were involved in that match-fixing scandal, and by rights shouldn’t have even been in the competition but turned out to be the best team. Funny old game isn’t it?
What wasn’t funny were the shenanigans outside the ground. Yes it’s those self proclaimed best fans in the world again, in trouble. It's common knowledge that ticket allocation is always a problem for the European Cup Final, in that UEFA have seen fit to hold each final in a different European country each year, so that each competing country’s league gets their shot at holding this prestigious tournament. Now when you’re talking about holding it at the Neu Camp in Barcelona, with capacity of 100,000, that’s fair enough, but the Olympic stadium in Athens held only 63,800. Hmm.
Maths 101 time. UEFA allocated 17,000 tickets to each club. That leaves 29,800 tickets to be shared amongst the “UEFA family”, a typically ambiguous phrase coined by the Fifa presidentn and fat bastard Sepp Blatter, that covers almost anyone who has anything to do with the game, i.e their member associations and federations, clubs, officials, administrators, referees, sponsors (all 16 of them), suppliers, uncles etc. Many of these make there way to ticket touts though, where they can be sold on to gullible fans for a pretty penny.
Okay, out of those 29,800 tickets are a certain allocation which are available in a general sale ballot to the pleb public, so conceivably if you got one of these you could be a fan of either Milan or Liverpool, or any other club, or not a fan at all i.e. a tout who could sell them on etc.
Back to the 17,000 tickets for Liverpool. You have to ask why did only 11,000 of these make their way to the fans, who sell out every home European tie at Anfield (so say 45000 go to every match, 1 in 4 might get a ticket for the final). Where did the other 6,000 go to? Liverpool FC’s explanation was that for every major event like this they have an obligation to their own sponsors, their former players and the like. Any club would use the occasion to award tickets as a thank you to those who work for them, This isn’t unusual, or unreasonable, but you’d have to question why 6,000? Isn’t that rather excessive?
So 11,000 genuine ticket holding fans make their way to Athens, as well as those who have bought off E-bay and the like. So far so good. But no. Thousands of ticket less fans make their way over as well, some hoping to get lucky with the touts over there, some to just enjoy the atmosphere and then some who have no intention of getting a genuine ticket and are going to try and blag their way in with or without forged tickets.
So you’d have thought the latter bunch wouldn’t have got a sniff of getting into the stadium, especially at a final. Ha ha ha, no. Champions League tickets had holograms, barcodes and watermarks on them - in theory enough to put the forgers off, but in the melee of getting into a football match, that counts for little. Police officers controlling crowds make isolated decisions based on public safety first and foremost. There were no turnstiles in Athens, and when the fans with forged or no tickets started to cause crushes at the entry points, fans were waved through with the most cursory of checks. Some said their tickets weren't checked at all.
"Is it giro day yet?"
The Athens police say there were 7,500 officers on duty, more, for example, than the number on duty for the FA Cup final. They had support from both the British and Italian police forces, who had spotters monitoring the fans. Around the stadiums, police in riot gear were much in evidence, assisting the stewards with ticket checks and in ushering the crowds in through the 'funnels' they created with lines of police vans etc. There was CCTV covering the main access points. In theory, that should have been enough. What went fundamentally wrong is the system in place for ticket checks just was not effective. As soon as that broke down, the problems began. Stewards inside the stadium could not or would not do much about the problem of fans with forgeries sitting in the seats of genuinely ticketed fans, who in turn took someone else's seat. In the end the gangways and access areas filled up with displaced fans, so UEFA took the decision to close the stadium, when you ended up with the crazy situation of fans with genuine tickets being denied entry to the ground.
And that’s without even mentioning the fans who allegedly had their tickets stolen. Loveable scousers eh?
UEFA spokesman and knob William Gaillard got his pre-emptive strike in early, proclaiming that "Unfortunately, in Britain, it is the behaviour. Liverpool fans are responsible for the problem before, during and after the game. They were trying to go over the barriers to get into the stadium without tickets, which is not behaviour we can condone. Milan supporters didn't face the same problems because they didn't behave in the same way. What other fans steal tickets from fellow fans or from the hands of children?" In his report, he paints a damning picture of the Anfield club's supporters' behaviour at the Champions League final. "We know what happened in Athens, and Liverpool fans were the cause of most of the trouble there. There have been 25 incidents involving Liverpool fans away from home since 2003 and these are in the report - most teams' supporters do not cause any trouble at all.”
Fair enough, but even as a United fan I can see that there is an element of attacking and blaming the Scousers whilst trying to play down UEFA’s inadequacies and the dismal handling of the whole affair. Understandably, there has been much outrage from the ambulance chasers of Merseyside and the club itself who, whilst not denying that a percentage of so-called fans have let them down badly, have gone on to rightly criticise UEFA for their shortcomings in organization. It’s like a tit-for-tat playground fight: “You did it” “No you did it, it’s your fault”.
"The vast majority of Liverpool fans are impeccably behaved, but there has always been a hard core of mindless thugs that ruin it for the rest. It hurts me to say this, but I won’t be following Liverpool on their travels in future.“ These are the words of Phil Hammond, who lost his son Philip at Hillsborough and is chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. Damning indeed.
UEFA seem to hold the Champions League final at inappropriate, generic venues that can be plastered with it's myriad of shiny euro-making brands. Next year’s venue is in
The bottom line in all this is that if people behaved responsibly, the European Cup Final would have gone by without trouble, much like when a few years ago it was held in
If Derek Jacobi’s on at the National Theatre in a rare production of Hamlet, and you can’t get a ticket as the chin-stroking brigade have nabbed all the tickets first, you might go turning up anyway and trying to score a ticket from a tout. Fair enough. But if that failed, would you then go forging or stealing one, blagging your way in and then sitting in a stranger’s seat? Or if all else failed, charging the entrance to the stalls? And then when your crusade ends horribly, in violence, injury or distress, would you then blame the management at the National Theatre for staging it at the Cottesloe Theatre, not the larger capacity Olivier Theatre?
If you cannot get a ticket for for the premiere of "Die Hard 4", you don’t go. Only in the stupid world of the big Football match do we find nothing unusual in 20,000 people arriving with tickets and the same number arriving without, but still expecting to get in, with nothing to do but get pissed and fume at their predicament until a combination of frustration, anger and rowdiness culminates in the stupid scenes that we saw outside the Olympic Stadium in Athens, where you get riot police using batons and tear gas (as they do) on anyone who wanders into their path. End of rant.
In other news, Citeh sack their manager Stuart Pearce, as predicted in an earlier blog entry. They seem to think they're going to get some overseas millionaire to invest in the club, and attract a top European manager, which is unlikely to happen. It's Man Citeh for Eric's sake. We said goodbye to Watford, Charlton and controversially on the last day, Sheffield United. Bye bye. You won't be missed. We say a big hello next year to Keano’s amazingly revitalised Sunderland, Steve Bruce's Burminghum (again), and Derby. Unfortunately, Wolves didn’t get through the play-offs, losing to the dreaded West Bromwich Albion in a heated two leg decider, the home leg of which Celia and I travelled to in the pouring rain one miserable Sunday. Enjoyable match but frustrating. From what I've seen, I think they’ve got it in them to go up next year, but bearing in mind the rebuilding Mick McCarthy has had to do this year, with very little money, it’s a feat that they got to the play-off’s at all. And anyway, it was good to see Derby County stuffing the Baggies to gain promotion. Boing boing indeed.
Blackpool will be playing both Albion and wolves next year as well as rivals Preston North End, as down a great unbeaten run towards the end of the season, they gained promotion via the Play-Offs. Yes, we’ll be able to watch Wolves hammer the mighty Tangerines at their half-stadium at Bloomfield next season, where we’ll find the 30,000+ that went to Wembley to watch them gain promotion will have dwindled to just over a third of that number. Glory hunters everywhere. I don’t begrudge Blackpool FC it’s success, as the team played some good football to get there, but if half of the 30,000 that travelled down to London supported them week in week out, they wouldn’t have been in the state they’ve been in for so long. Can they stay up? Let’s wait and see.
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