And Munich day-trippers thought they had delays? Don’t know they were born…
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Loading ...Booking my Munich trip inevitably recalls earlier Chelsea trips to European finals. I was too young for Athens in 1971. Moscow will be fresh in many travellers’ memories (not for the right reasons) but the first European final for many Chelsea fans was the 1998 Cup Winners Final in Stockholm. When we qualified by beating Vicenza, five out of the six of us with season tickets immediately decided to go – me, The Curator, The Driver, Mark and Jem.
I’d done four previous Euro aways (torrid nights in Bruges and Zaragosa, the magical Spencer night in Vienna and a Flo mastershow at Real Betis), always going on the official club trip. Despite leaflets outside Stamford Bridge offering cheaper trips, we decided to go with the club to Stockholm, presumably as that guaranteed a match ticket.
I can’t remember how much the club trip (which included a return flight from Gatwick, a Stockholm hotel the night before game and all coach transfers in Sweden) with Chelsea Worldwide Travel cost, but it was a lot, especially as we’d just moved house and were skint. I still have my match ticket which was 250SEK (just under £20) an absolute bargain compared with the rest of the trip, as it turned out. We booked as soon as trips went on sale, mindful of the small ground capacity (c30,000) and the massive demand from Chelsea fans. For reasons unclear at the time, and even less so now, we opted to fly back to Gatwick straight after the game. Big mistake.
The flight left at 06.30 the day before the game so it was the usual ludicrously early check-in, beer, sleep on flight, coach to hotel, beer, pass out, shower, beer, cab, beer, food, argument over bill, beer, cab, bed, hangover but with a few Scandinavian twists. When we got on the coach to stay in our ‘Stockholm hotel’ we were a bit surprised when we turned the opposite direction from the city. 30 minutes later, we discovered we were in a 2* hotel in a suburban town 35km from the city, with a miniscule bar and no late trains back.
Cabbing it into the city centre, we met a Chelsea fan who had travelled independently and paid less than us for a flight and 3 nights in a city centre 4* hotel. Sound familiar?
The Curator had business contacts out there and after a few wallet-lightening drinks we ended up, for reasons that escape me, in a bar where the main custom was from Swedish Hells Angels and beer was a mere £8 a pint. The rest of the evening is a blur, though I remember we didn’t stay in that particular bar for long, fortunately the Angels just ignored us, probably and rightly not seeing five Englishmen in their late 30’s and early 40’s as a threat. I also remember most of us running out of money (Stockholm’s reputation as a ludicrously expensive city was well deserved) and a cab stop on the way home for all of us to go to the cashpoint – I know I must have spent well over £100 that night.
Given the distance from the city centre, and the fact the coach left the hotel at 15.30 (when we would be given our match tickets) all of us apart from The Driver ignored the chance to do any sightseeing, preferring to stay in bed or drink in the tiny hotel bar. The Driver has an unusual habit of taking a boomerang to throw in around parks before away games (don’t ask) and, sure enough, he found a green space to toss it around in. We had a dreadful (and expensive) Chinese meal for lunch, a few quick beers and got on the coach. We were dropped off close to the ground about an hour later and given strict instructions to go straight back to the coach afterwards, as we would be leaving for the airport soon after the final whistle, win or lose.
Jem worked in the global fruit & veg trade and had managed to source two very large boxes of celery through contacts, near to our drop off point. This was passed around nearby fans inevitably a prolonged celery-hurtling session got underway, watched by bemused police and locals. The police were very relaxed all round, which certainly made a change from our Zaragosa and Bruges experiences.
All the bars and restaurants near us were packed (Damon Albarn and Phil Daniels were holding court in one) so we resorted to that social activity of last resort, drinking from cans in a square near the ground. For three hours. We weren’t alone. As kick-off neared, thousands of bellowing, chanting Chelsea fans were doing the same thing (or trying too, as supermarkets ran out of beer). Long queues built up at cashpoints and the local bureau de change as skint, thirsty fans blew their collective budgets big time. We bumped into an old Shepherds Bush drinking companion from years back who was busy passing cans of beer out of a supermarket window to his mates. I vaguely remember long-time Chelsea fan and actor Clive Mantle leading a chant of Carefree at some point during the afternoon, after being challenged with “Mantle, Mantle, give us a song”.
Much loved ex-MP and then 5Live phone-in host David Mellor and a group of his associates had to walk the gauntlet through the crowd of us to get to the ground. Inexcusably, he was subjected to a torrent of ribald abuse from hundreds of fans about Chelsea shirts, Antonia de Sancha (younger fans should look her up on Wikipedia), his size and a number of other personal issues. Tut, tut, Chelsea supporters, tut, tut.
We had heard that Stuttgart hadn’t sold many tickets but were amazed how few fans they had outside the ground. We went in just as queues started to build up and it became clear they only had a couple of thousand fans present, which astonished us. There were some neutrals but basically Chelsea had most of the ground, probably about 25,000 fans. Chelsea here, Chelsea there, Chelsea every ******* where. Indeed.
The match itself is, inevitably, a bit hazy. Zola was on the bench and, as even younger fans will know, came on to score probably his most famous Chelsea goal. Interestingly, the game ended with future European final managerial team Roberto Di Matteo and substitute Eddie Newton on the pitch. Who’d have thought where they’d be in 14 years, eh?
A 1-0 win, a parade of the cup then back onto the coach in celebratory mood for what we were assured would be a 01.30 take off to Gatwick. I had naively told my wife I’d be home about 04.00 UK time and would be able to take the kids to school. As it turned out, at 04.00 UK time I was still in Stockholm airport, trying to get on a flight with thousands of others who were also hungover, thirsty and tired.
From the moment our coach was caught in a long queue trying to get away from the ground, chaos reigned. It took ages to get to the airport, then we weren’t let off the coach for about an hour, stuck in a long queue of Chelsea supporters coaches, official and otherwise. Nobody seemed to have to check in when we finally got into the airport terminal as thousands of fans roamed departure gates looking for spaces on any flight. There was no information, no food or drink, Chelsea Worldwide Travel were unable to help (to be fair, this shambles was not their fault but a rare example of Scandinavian inefficiency – the airport simply could not cope with the number of fans booked on flights home at the same time and should have realised this when scheduling flights) and basically a sort of benign anarchy reigned. Football fans get a bad press sometimes, but their good humour that long night is to be commended.
Mark eventually somehow blagged his way onto a flight not operated by Chelsea Worldwide Travel. Our flight number was shown, but when the four of us tried to get on we were told it was full. After a lot of arguing and running up and down the departure terminal we did finally get away on a different CWT flight, I guess about 07.00. There was no attempt to log who was on the flight, so if the worst had happened there would have been no accurate passenger records. We were by no means the last to escape Stockholm, and we later heard of half empty planes taking off in the small hours and day-trip fans still stuck there at 10.00 in the morning.
What I do know is I got home at 09.30, over five hours late, bedraggled, exhausted, hungover, skint, wild-eyed and happy, just as my long-suffering wife got home from taking the kids to school. Insanely, The Driver promptly went to work. I went to bed, getting up just in time to miss picking the kids up from school.
The whole trip cost several hundred pounds I didn’t have and a certain amount of goodwill at home but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I didn’t do another European overseas away trip until Moscow ten years later, due to work/family commitments and financial constraints, and for reasons I still cannot fathom The Driver and I did the club day trip. As veterans of that Thomas Cook day trip to Moscow will remember, almost exactly the same happened after the game in terms of coach and airport chaos.
Stockholm was the first European final for thousands of our fans, and certainly whetted the appetite for more. Here’s hoping we get the same result, and have the same relaxed pre-match build up, but without the attached post-match chaos for those of you flying straight home.
Tim Rolls learned from past mistakes, travelled independently to Munich with The Curator, and stayed in town after the game. The Driver, a veteran of both the Stockholm and Moscow airport fiascos, again did a club day trip for a European final, a real triumph of hope over experience. It is not known whether he is took his boomerang.
Written for the CFCUK135 Champions League Final Special, which many supporters will not have seen.
You may follow Tim on twitter, @tim_rolls.
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Until I got on the plane home from Moscow I wasn’t even sure I was at the right airport!
Nice one Tim
For Munich, we drove. Much much much more relaxed.