My travelling mate, Carl, and me arrive at JLA around 5am for a 7am flight, the weather is cool and drizzly but this hasn't deterred a large number of fans from arriving in their shorts. Outside the airport, time is spent browsing the wares of a souvenir seller and I purchase a baseball cap with 'LIVERPOOL ISTANBUL 25/5/05' emblazoned upon it, 'All them 5's' I think to myself 'it's got to be our year; there’s so many omens'.
Check-in is painless and takes only a couple of minutes at the Lonsdale desks. We decide to have a wander around before going through to gate 5 for boarding. Carl calls our mate Andy, to see if he has arrived yet, as we know he is due to fly out on the 7.30am Lonsdale flight. Andy has also just arrived and we greet him and his brother Jamie as they check-in. At this point I become aware that my 'Danger Mines! Cambodia' t-shirt is highly inappropriate attire as it consists of not one ounce of the colour red within it, and, what with Carl and Andy sporting their Retro tops and Jamie wearing a Shankly t-shirt I feel somewhat out of place. I make my way to the Liverpool FC shop and purchase a souvenir t-shirt with 'Anfield’s our Church, Football's our Religion' along the bottom and a big beautiful picture of the big eared one on the front of it. After a quick change into my new t-shirt I meet up with the boys in Burger King and discuss the possible day's events over a cup of BK mud.
At Passport control people are handing out ‘don’t buy The S*n’ stickers and we take some for ourselves and some to pass onto friends. A transfer bus is waiting at our gate and we are soon settled in for what turns out to be a decent flight with a fairly tasty breakfast. A couple of songs are sung on the plane but the atmosphere is generally one of anticipation and is fairly low key, much to the displeasure of the cabin crew, who comment 'we thought there would be more chanting'.
On landing in Saibha Gökchen we disembark and get through customs in no time at all and there is a straightforward transfer onto our coach with just enough time to stop and chat with an outward bound Turkish cabin crew asking for a go of Carl's flag and commenting that they love Liverpool - a good start.
My first impression of Istanbul, especially on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, is of how downtrodden most of the areas seem to be and of how the splendid and magnificent Mosques protrude from the depressed suburban dwellings. This impression slowly changes the closer we get to the European Istanbul.
The coach doesn't get lost but progress is slow through the narrow streets of the old city of Istanbul. Everyone is out on the streets with smiles and waves and all seems to be extremely friendly. We eventually make it to the Hotel Cara and check-in is really quick and well organised and we are in our room and out again within 20 minutes of arriving. The first Taksi we see is hired and we head for Taksim square.
The journey to Taksim is quite eventful, with more lane changes and horn use in 15 minutes of travel time than the average UK driver would do in fifteen years. Every vehicle in the traffic seems to be honking horns and some of them beep when they see our flag hanging out the Taksi window or for one of the numerous others. Taksim square is heard long before we see it as 'Fields Of Anfield Road' comes floating out over the roar of the traffic like the rallying call of a huge army ready to go on the march.
It takes a few minutes to get our bearings, and find some ale, but we stake our claim on top of the shops across the steps from McDonald’s and proceed to immerse ourselves in the wonderful ambience of the occasion. Beer is plentiful with local entrepreneurs walking around with buckets filled with Efes for varying prices. We purchase some beverages, chat to some fellow supporters, sing some songs and take some photos. The local Turks seem thrilled at our revelry and some take videos of us singing songs and dancing. Looking back on it I don’t think it had sunk in that we were in Istanbul and that we were hours away from what could potentially be one of the greatest nights in our clubs history.
Whilst waiting to be served in McDonald’s I have a few surreal minutes, as the girl behind the counter instead of asking ‘who’s next’, starts each new order with a rendition of ‘Ring Of Fire’. ‘der,der,der,der,der,der,der’, she goes, ‘der,der,der,der,der,der,der’ reply the waiting customers.
We scoff the scran and notice the square is emptying and decide to make our way to the stadium. So, off we set with hope in our hearts, a song in the air and a McDonald’s bag full to the brim with ale. We find the free buses and cram ourselves onto one of them. The atmosphere on the bus is hot, sticky, noisy but magnificent.
There is a fantastic sing-along on the bus – with one lad getting all frustrated because no one would join in with his Alonso song – every one seems to want to sing Luis García’s song and this goes on for about twenty minutes. The rest of the Liverpool repertoire is then brought into play. All along the side of the road are Turkish locals, both adults and children, out waving us along and wishing us well.
After what seems an absolute age we start to catch the odd glimpse of the stadium but it is obvious it is quite far away in the distance? As the traffic starts to crawl the banter starts to fly between taksi’s and coaches with the ‘Alonso’ guy entertainingly telling people to 'purra smile on yer face, yer going to a European Cup Final, for Christ's sake' if anyone looked even slightly like they weren’t enjoying themselves. To be fair, he had a point. The bus eventually came to a stand-still and we decide to get off and walk (As I lift the McDonald’s bag it feels unusually light, and then I realise that the bottom has fallen out of it. Cue Carl and me stuffing a can into every available pocket).
The stadium appears like a ship on the horizon and is so big it only looks half a mile away but it must be 2 miles or more because it takes us ages to walk to it. As we start the walk to the stadium across the ‘fields of Attaturk’ with the rest of the red army, the enormity of the events unfolding hits me and I have one of those moments that everyone must have at some point and start walking and mumbling to myself ‘oh my God, I can’t believe this, this is awesome!’ It’s finally hit me.
As we approach the festival site I can hear the last strains of 'Heart As Big As Liverpool' being sung. The sight of all them Liverpool fans with the stadium in the background is breath-taking. I start chatting to a bloke walking alongside us and realise it’s Tony Warner, Carl gets his photo taken with him. I think this must be another omen as we also saw him at the Chelsea semi-final at Anfield as we were taking our seats.
I take some photos of the stage invasion when the now infamous ‘Pleeeeese leave the stage, it is for your own good, pleeeese go that way’ incident takes place. It is one of the funniest things I have ever heard and seen, although I’m glad everyone decided to get off the stage in the end.
I meet an old friend I haven’t seen for years, by the side of the stage and we get a photo taken by the 'Them Scousers Again' banner (probably my favourite banner of the ones that I saw).
Carl tries to contact Andy and his brother, who we knew had been delayed at JLA and got bussed straight to the stadium. Amazingly Andy is walking past us just as Carl gets through, but we don’t see him as we have one eye on a bit of trouble brewing between a few lads at the back of the stage. I suddenly see Andy just in time to hear him saying ‘Alright, you sound really clear’ as he turns round and sees us.
Andy and his brother tell us that they arrived straight from the airport only to find the only beer on sale was alcohol-free so they took a Taksi to the nearest off-license to buy some real beer. The next couple of hours are spent chatting and singing and watching people making their way to the stadium.
As we make our way to the ground I spot Anny Road, who I recognise from the pictures that have been posted on ynwa.tv and go over and introduce myself. Out of the gloom stumble 3 more ynwa.tv regulars Sen, RP and Will who has a tea cosy on his head for some reason. Anny Road kindly offers me a can of beer that I gleefully accept from him and we part with ‘right then, lets go and win the European Cup, good luck’ or something along those lines.
The match…… well, you all saw it, plenty have tried to explain it, you all experienced the emotions, and none who were there (or wherever you were) will forget it. If you could experience those emotions through a song – then that song would be number one forever. If a director could make a film that, in the space 130 minutes, could send you to the depth of despair and bring you out the other side with the highest possible elation, - you’d pay to watch it, every single day.
I, like everyone else, was thinking ‘damage limitation’ at half-time. If we could get 1 goal we could salvage some pride. The ‘YNWA’ and ‘we're gonna win 4-3’ was on reflection us saying ‘okay, if you the team go down, we all go down together.’
Gerrard’s goal was met with relief and a wave of renewed optimism. Šmicer’s goal was with disbelief and a ‘Flaming hell, were did that come from’. If we hadn’t got the penalty we would have scored with the next attack or the one after that. We were on a roll and we were all over AC, they had completely gone at this point – our players believed and more importantly the fans believed.
The next hour of football I spent whistling as loud as I could whenever AC had the ball and clapping and singing whenever Liverpool had possession. I believe I contributed in some small way to that beautiful trophy coming home, along with 35-40,000 others of course, oh…. and some very important people actually on the pitch itself.
The penalties brought more whistling and lots of people giving a running commentary ‘right, we only have to score 2 from 3, and we win’ or ‘If he misses it, it’s ours’, etc. and then the sudden realisation that we had done it ‘Oh my God, we had done it.’ What a feeling, what celebrations, what elation. If it's this good as a fan I can only imagine how good it must be for Gerrard and Carragher and the rest of the players.
The bus journey back to Taksim Square was long and everyone was emotionally drained. I couldn’t speak – I had no voice left. We saw Andy and his brother on the bus in the next lane and we celebrated across the traffic. No thought was given to the fact that their flight was 3.00am and it was now 2.15am and we hadn’t even hit the centre of Istanbul. He didn’t care – we’d just won the European Cup for the fifth time and this time for keeps
We celebrated for a while back in Taksim square and then made our way to our hotel and met up with a couple of lads for a few drinks in the bar. The next day we had some time to kill so we hit the hotel pool for an hour or so and relaxed with a couple of beers whilst we soaked away the aches and pains of the previous day's exertions.
We walked around one of the market bazaars in the Sultan Ahmet area and around one of the many Mosques before heading back to catch our coach to the airport. We started hearing horror stories of delays on the flights home and I met someone who had already been delayed 10 hours and whose plane was still showing 6 on the board. We got told by a Lonsdale steward to go straight through to check-in as our flights were showing as on time. We went through but there was nowhere to check-in. we decided to stay in view of the stewards who had no info to pass on but would let us know when they knew anything.
I don’t want to criticise the Lonsdale stewards too much, as the chaos at the airport was not their fault and I’m sure lots of stewards tried their best but the ones on our flight pretty much left us in the lurch. On hearing that it was ‘get on any flight’ none of them told any of the people hanging around they just made a run for it through to the boarding gates. Anyway, it was quite annoying to see about 10 of them go straight through a gate onto a transfer coach (basically pushing in front of hundreds of fans who were already queuing – blatantly using their steward status to get through). A lot of heated exchanges took place as they frantically tried to get the 1 steward who didn’t ditch us to join them on the bus. Oh how I laughed when the girl in control of boarding said ‘zat bus is for Dublin – Liverpool flights use gates 4&5. I hope they enjoyed their Guinness.
We got extremely, extremely lucky travelling back and landed at JLA only 1 hour late, but we could have been there for God knows how many hours if we had been relying on information from our guides. Even so, if we had been delayed by 5, 10, 15 or even more hours – I wouldn’t have cared one iota, not after the 48 hrs I had just had.
Well done you red men!
Jeff Guitar
