I went on tour in Europe with some friends in October/November, and since returning haven't found the rhythm to post here much (lot's going on). So it's taken me until now to say:
Salut, Sylvain! Was good to meet you in Nice!
I had intended to accompany this greeting with a photo of the OGC Nice lighter you gave me, safely returned to Yorkshire. Sadly I haven't had time, but it is close at hand and much appreciated. Also appreciated was the moment in Nice, as you paced around nervously smoking before going on stage, when I told you that Rob, our driver, supported Halifax Town.
"Ah yes," you said, preoccupied with pre-performance thought. "They play in blue and white stripes."
Such knowledge of non-league football under pressure! Rob said the next day, "that chap in Nice really knew his football!"
I remember when Leeds United played in Monaco in 1995, in the UEFA Cup. They won 3-0,
Tony Yeboah scored a hat-trick wearing the unusual green-and-blue striped away kit, and the Leeds fans changed the words of the chant 'you're going home in a Yorkshire ambulance' to 'you're going home in a red Ferrari'.
On our way out of Nice on that tour, we drove through Monaco, and I passed quite close to that curious stadium.
I may as well throw in the rest of the football content from the tour. The aforementioned Rob Kito is a seasoned tour driver and always takes in as many games as he can, matching tour itineries to fixture lists where possible so he can sneak off during soundchecks and the like. On this trip, he had me for company for the footie end. In Lisbon, we arrived at a venue a stone's throw from The Stadium Of Light an hour before Benfica vs Celtic. We managed to score some cheap tickets from a Celtic fan who had bought them in the Benfica end for insurance but then got some in the Celtic end. We only needed two but bought all three; the third went to a tramp who had tried to sell us a very torn looking ticket earlier. The game was a good one, settled when Benfica finally brought on an English style centre forward and he scored with moments to spare. Here I am, outside with Eusebio:
Two nights later, in Ponte Vedre in Spain, we caught Spurs' UEFA cup game, not realising that this was the match when Martin Jol's sacking was announced at half time. We had an inkling from the way the cameras spent half the second half focussed either on Jol or Daniel Levy. And I ate a fine slice of tortilla.
Pisa vs Modena had slipped off Rob's radar, so it was a coincidence that we got stuck in Pisa football traffic as we tried to find the tower. In the dark. And the pissing rain. Having got caught near the ground, we drove away to be free of traffic, and thought we saw the leaning tower in the distance. This turned out to be a mobile phone mast. It did, however, get us back into town, where after an hour of aimless driving we asked and found that the football ground is basically right next to the tower. The game was underway by this point, and just as we walked to the tower, there was a huge cheer as the first goal was scored, and I ran toward our fabled tower as if I had scored the goal. I got some great photos of the tower at night, illuminated by the floodlights from the football ground:
After a pizza, Rob and I tried to sneak in to catch the last ten minutes but the ground was really hard to actually get to and the final whistle defeated us. We found out next day that it the game ended 3-3.
We were in Rome the next day, on the day of the Rome derby, Roma vs Lazio. We definitely wanted a piece of that, but the Romans we spoke to just laughed it off as impossible to attend without a ticket. We also heard some nightmare stories of innocent Brits attending the game, only to be herded onto a train at the final whistle and forced to travel twenty miles out of town. We settled for watching it on a TV in a small cafe, in the company of some good ol' boys cheering for Roma (which was a relief; I wouldn't like to be in a Nazio bar). A great game finished 3-2 to Roma, and Rob and I emerged from the cafe
astoundingly pissed.
Last, in Zurich, again we were a mere fifteen minutes walk from FC Zurich's ground (this being pre-assertained by Rob), arriving at five for a five-thirty kickoff. We parked the van and fucked off to leave the bands to it. Only two gigs in Switzerland meant a limited number of Swiss Francs; tickets were 33F each and we had sixty. On hearing our plaint to the ticket window, an astoundingly kind kid of about fifteen tapped our arms and handed us the required six francs. Rob (more lingo-conversant than I) stammered our thanks and handed over some euros in exchange, and we got in. The ground appears to have been redone for the forthcoming European Championships; it had very modern looking signage, with huge Helvetica-letters indicating entrances, and curious floodlights: a series of stalks angled away from the stadium with a row of lights on each.
Sion took an early lead but Zurich ran out 4-1 winners. We were right next to the main fans' section, the SudeKurve:
- where songs were partly orchestrated through loudspeakers at the front of the section. Most of the songs seemed to be a variation of 'la la la la la la la, FC Zurich', best of which was to the tune of 'Moonlight Shadow', 'FC Zurich' replacing the words 'Moonlight Shadow'. Oh, and everybody seemed to be pissed out of their heads: teenagers necking cans of lager were prolific outside the ground.
I returned to find Leeds' assistant manager Gustavo Poyet pilfered by Tottenham, and Leeds seemingly stumbling slightly as a result. The appointment of Dave 'Harry' Bassett as replacement hasn't exactly inspired confidence (Wise and he did some comedy press-conference routine about Bassett getting the names of the players wrong) and I do hope that Poyet hasn't taken all the management knowhow at the club away with him to London. It does kind of speak to how good he must be that Spurs nicked him, and not Wise. It will be interesting to see if Leeds keep the momentum going under the dwarf; I've no doubt that promotion will come, but will it be with the same esprit and elan as the first months of the season, or will getting knocked out of the cup by no-marks become the level?
