Tales From North And South America

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Flamengo : 20 June 2025.

The 2024/25 football season began for me on Saturday 29 June when I flew out to Rio de Janeiro and saw three matches in that incredible city. The second game took place on the evening of my 59^th birthday on Saturday 6 July with an entertaining and noisy game between Flamengo and Cuiba at the Maracana Stadium. Almost twelve months later, my second-from-last game of this season would also feature Flamengo, but this time I would be crossing the Atlantic Ocean to see them play Chelsea in Philadelphia.

This is damned close to “completing the circle” and it’s good enough for me.

I am used to trips across the Atlantic. In September 1989 I visited North America for the very first time. I travelled over to New York with my college mate Ian and embarked on a ten-month odyssey of North America, which famously included a nine-hundred-mile cycle ride down the East Coast. Since then, my love for Chelsea Football Club and of travel, and of baseball and of Americana, kept calling me back.

But then, for some time, my love for the US waned. My last pre-season trip with Chelsea was in 2016 – Ann Arbor and Minneapolis – and I was not tempted by recent ones, especially when the club decided to play a bit-part role in the reality TV show that is Wrexham Football Club, not once but twice.

Modern football, eh?

We became World Club Champions against Palmeiras in 2022 – in lieu of 2021 – but then Gianni Infantino and the money-makers at FIFA decided to expand this competition to include a massive thirty-two teams and to stage a new version of the FIFA Club World Cup in the US.

And lo, I was conflicted.

Was I in favour of this competition?

Honestly, no.

More games, more expense, a new competition, FIFA personified.

Would I go? I was not sure.

But my mind went to work on this. If I was to go, it would be my twentieth trip to the US, and a perfect way to celebrate my 60^th birthday a few weeks after. The 2024/25 season would be a long and demanding season for me, for various reasons, but I knew for some time that it would almost certainly end with a trip to the United States for the latest incarnation of the Intercontinental Cup.

Soon into the planning stages, my old Chelsea mate Glenn showed an interest in going too, and it would be a lovely addition to the pre-season games we saw in Beijing in 2017 and then Perth in 2018.

The fixtures were announced with one game in Atlanta and two in Philadelphia. This pleased me no end. I didn’t fancy Atlanta as I had visited it a few times before, including two Atlanta Braves games in 1996 and 2002, but also en route to visit my friend Roma and her family in the Great Smoky Mountains a few times.

Two games in Philly would be more than perfect. I have a huge personal attachment to this city. My great great grandparents lived in Philadelphia in the mid-nineteenth century for five years before returning to Somerset, and I visited the city in 2010 with my eighty-year-old mother, who often said that she wanted to see where her relatives had resided all those years ago. At the time of our visit in 2010, we only knew a few facts about our relatives; that they had been shipwrecked on the voyage to Philadelphia in Newfoundland and that they returned to England not too long after.

To see my team play in a city where my family had lived in the 1850s pleased me no end.

I made the decision to add New York to our trip, since I figured that it would be a mortal sin for Glenn not to see one of the greatest cities in the world with me.

Flights were booked. Match tickets were purchased. The accommodation took a while to sort out. But we were on our way.

Phackinell.

New York.

After months of preparation and anticipation, I picked up Glenn at his house in Harris ( ! ) Close in Frome at 4am on Saturday 14 July. Glenn’s only other trip to the US was to Florida in 1992. He went with a mate of ours, Chippy, who was the Liverpool fan from Frome that I saw in the Annie Road seats on my first visit to Anfield in 1985, but I digress!

He was excited, I was excited, ah the joy of foreign travel.

At 6.30am, I was parked up at my mate Ian’s house in Stanwell, so close to Heathrow T5. Ironically, prior to my trip to Rio a year earlier, I had booked a “JustPark” spot in Stanwell, and then walked to a bus stop to take me to T5 and the bus stop was just fifty yards from his house.

The 1230 flight to JFK departed a few minutes late, but the pilot knew of a short cut, and we landed in Queens ahead of schedule.

A little light rain welcomed us to New York, but our trip into the city could not have been easier or cheaper.

AirTrain to Jamaica, Long Island Rail Road to Penn Station.

$8.

Cheap as French fries.

Now then, dear reader, let’s delve back into Chelsea’s history.

In June 2001, I visited New York to see the New York Yankees play five games of baseball, but to also meet up with my friend Roma from North Carolina. I had an unforgettable week. On the last day together, we found ourselves in the main forecourt of Penn Station, which is a deeply unlovable subterranean hellhole right below Madison Square Garden. On that morning, I ’phoned Glenn who had been calling in to check on my dear mother while I was away. And it was during that ‘phone-call that Glenn told me that we had signed Frank Lampard and Emanuel Petit. So, a little bit of my Chelsea history took place right in the middle of Manhattan.

And here we were, walking past that very spot.

There should be a royal blue plaque to commemorate this moment on a wall nearby.

Up at street level, I took a photo of Glenn with a misty Empire State Building in the background, and my heart was buzzing and bouncing. An hour later, we had located our apartment on East 14^th Street, near Union Square, and were making our way to my favourite bar in Manhattan, “McSorley’s”, and our walk took us past the hotel on St. Mark’s Place where Roma and I had stayed in 2001.

At “McSorley’s” the New York Fairytale began in earnest.

Here are some highlights…

McSorley’s.

This was my fourth visit. In 1997, Ian – my college mate who was with me in 1989 – returned to New York with me to watch the first-ever “Subway Series” between the Yankees and the Mets, and we visited this grand old pub for the first-time with our friend Stacey, who we met in Florida nearing the end of our cycle ride in 1989. In 2001, I visited it with Roma on our first night together. In 2015, I met up with my friend Steve from Philly prior to a Mets game. Steve’s grandparents were married in the Ukranian church opposite. Steve loves it that the bar is officially on Shevchenko Place.

With Glenn, we stayed around an hour and a half and drank their light and dark beers – the only choices – which are always served in two half-pints. The place was heaving, full of happy tourists. We were given free crackers, cheese and onion, and some lads from Portland bought us two rounds of our beers. It was a perfect start to our trip.

Jack Demsey’s.

Unbeknown to Glenn, I had contacted some great friends in New York to stage a little “surprise party” for him underneath the Empire State Building in a fantastic bar, “Jack Demsey’s”, on West 33^rd Street. The “meet” was at 6pm, and by 7pm around a dozen friends had accumulated together, and a fantastic night followed. The bar was full of Palmeiras fans, and there were a few Fluminense fans floating about too. The usual watering hole for the New York Blues – “Legends” – had been block-booked by Fluminense for five whole days. Both teams from Brazil were playing two games in New Jersey. Every time that we saw a Fluminense fan, we sang “Thiago Silva.” The volume of Brazilian fans in the city shocked me but I loved the buzz of seeing so many fans enjoying life.

Later, my friend Dom took us to a rooftop bar right underneath the Empire State Building and another one too, and we caught a late cab home. It had been one of the greatest nights.

Ten Miles.

On the Sunday, we slept on, but by around midday we were up. The misty and cool weather was perfect for a walk through the streets of Lower Manhattan, and it was a pleasure to be able to see Glenn’s reaction to a new city. Many people who read my rambling prose have commented how they often feel like they are living vicariously through my experiences, and it was now rewarding to see Glenn’s reactions to places that were more familiar to me, but unfamiliar to him. I had mentioned to him on the flight that I was relishing this. It was as if I was seeing New York for the very first time all over again, but through his eyes.

We craved a meal at a typical diner – booths, stools at the counter, eggs over easy, free coffee refills, rude waitresses, you know the type – but our neighbourhood was sadly lacking in these. We eventually found an Italian restaurant for a filling sandwich and then an Argentinian café, complete with Diego Maradona references, for a coffee.

Our walk took us through Little Italy, the outskirts of Chinatown, close to the Brooklyn Bridge and South Street Seaport, all the way down to Wall Street, then Battery Park and views of the Statue of Liberty. From there, we delved into “Century 21” for a little shopping, then walked north up Broadway and eventually back to our digs. In total, we walked ten miles, and the last two were as painful as hell. But it had been a magnificent first full day, and a little like the ground travelled on my first full day with Ian back in 1989.

Old Friends.

On the Monday, my friend Stacey – from 1989 and 1997, but also from visits in other years including with my mother to her house in New Jersey in 2010 – came into the city and met us for breakfast on Third Avenue. Glenn departed to take in a ferry trip to Liberty and Ellis Islands. Stacey and I did our own tour but were dismayed when we found out that the International Centre of Photography was closed until 19 June. We are both keen photographers. Instead, I suggested that we visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. It was fascinating. We learned of a beer parlour that was run by a German family, and then a trader who was Jewish, and it really enabled me to go back in time, to let my mind wander. I studied the migration of Europeans into North America while at college and it is a fascination of mine, enhanced through my own family’s experience in Philadelphia.

We met up with Glenn at “Jack Demsey’s” at 2.30pm to enable us to watch a far from emphatic Chelsea victory over LAFC from Atlanta. The stadium in Atlanta looked so empty and the bar in Manhattan was empty too. It dismayed me that of the dozen or so Chelsea fans at “Jack Demsey’s” many were looking at their ‘phones, eating and chatting while the game took place. The game on the TV seemed an inconvenience.

My love affair with the US began to wane once again.

I remembered an odd football-related tale from 1990. On our return to England in that year, Stacey visited Ian in London but also came down to see me in Somerset. Later they stayed with some friends in Bristol, who happened to live near Eastville, the former home of Bristol Rovers. Glenn and I had seen Chelsea lose 0-3 to Rovers at Eastville in 1980, but I had remembered that Stacey went to see some greyhound racing at Eastville on her visit in 1990.

That all three of us had visited Eastville made me chuckle.

During the game, my friend Keith popped in to see us, and on walking north after the game we witnessed an event in Times Square celebrating the premier of the “F1” movie. Glenn even spotted the Frome driver, and former World Champion from 2010, Jensen Button.

High.

On Tuesday morning, we walked a large section of The Highline, and I was reminded of my walk there in 2015. I love it. It also took me back to my first week in Manhattan in 1989 when Ian and I stayed in a very cramped hostel on West 20th Street, right under the walkway which in those days was just an abandoned train line. Since 2015, the flora and fauna has established itself and parts are in complete shade from the trees.

Again, we spotted Brazilian fans, but hardly any European fans. Not surprisingly, the South Americans were taking this tournament very seriously. Out of nowhere, I commented that as most football supporters who go to games put club over country, I wondered if in one hundred years’ time, the dominant World Cup competition would be this club version rather than the established one for countries.

Would USA 2025 be as significant as Uruguay 1930?

Something to contemplate perhaps.

Meet Me At Stan’s.

Later that day, after a walk up Fifth Avenue, we took the 4 Line to Yankee Stadium, and met up with my friends Mike and Steve, both Chelsea fans, both Yankee fans, Mike from New Jersey, Steve from Philadelphia. We met at “Stan’s Sports Bar” on River Avenue, right opposite the site of the old Yankee Stadium, home of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto and Reggie Jackson, and a place that I visited twenty-three times from 1990 to 2008. It is where Ray Wilkins made his debut during the US Bicentennial Tournament in 1976.

I was in my element, talking to the lads, reminiscing, supping “Rolling Rock”, looking forward to the baseball, but also thinking back to 1993 when my friends Paul and Nicky from Frome met me here before a game against Detroit. And to 1997 when Ian and I drank amidst shouts of “Let’s Go Yankees” and “Let’s Go Mets” in the first official series between the two teams, giving a real football-feel to the night. And to 2010 when my mother and I had a drink in “Stan’s” before a game against Baltimore. And to 2012 and 2013 when Chelsea played two games at either end of the season at the new Yankee Stadium, acting as bookends to my personal season, and “Stan’s” was the pre-match bar once again.

Game 1 : 22 July 2012 – Chelsea 2 Paris St, Germain 2

Game 57 : 25 May 2013 – Chelsea 3 Manchester City 5

I last saw Mike at the City game, and I last saw Steve at that Mets game in 2015.

I worked out that this was my thirty-third visit to “Stan’s” and this made me smile. I have known Lou, the owner, since 1993 and I also got to know the chap who runs it too. It was a joy to see Mike again. The first two beers had been on him.

Yankee Stadium.

So, here I was. I was back at Yankee Stadium again, and it felt like I had never been away. My last visit was in late July 2015 for an easy win against Baltimore Orioles. Right after that game, I drove from the multi-story car park that used to abut the old stadium, to Charlotte in North Carolina, via an overnight stop in West Virginia, for a game against PSG.

As I have said in these reports before, I much preferred the old stadium; it was cramped, atmospheric, grubby, but reeked of atmosphere and history. I loved the way that the upper decks towered over the infield and resembled jaws waiting to clamp shut. I loved it there. The new place just seems like a shopping mall. Most of my fellow Yankee friends feel the same. A little portion of my waning interest in baseball since around 2010 has undoubtedly been the fact that old Yankee Stadium is no longer there. A lesson for everyone, I think.

Build it and they will come?

Maybe not.

For this game, we had super seats in row one of the upper tier above home plate and Glenn, bless him, had gifted my seat as an early birthday present. Unfortunately it was a dire game of baseball, quite possibly the worst I have ever seen. The visiting Angels got ahead early and eventually won 4-0. But I loved it, and I loved the tales that Mike and Steve shared. Mike used to work for the Yankees as an intern in 2001 and 2002.

It was my thirty-first Yankee home game; twenty-three in the old Yankee Stadium, eight in the new stadium and my record stands at 20-11.

More importantly, Glenn absolutely loved it. And he is now a Yankee fan.

Dodge In Brooklyn.

On the Wednesday, our last full day in New York, the sun came out and we enjoyed another full day out walking and sightseeing. We took a cab to “DUMBO” ; Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. I guess “DUMB” would have been just, er, dumb.

What a great setting. With the East River laid out before us, and the skyscrapers of the financial district to our left and the midtown skyscrapers to our right, I was lost in a world of my own, with a George Gershwin song only a few heartbeats away. Even here we were surrounded by Palmeiras fans. We walked back into Manhattan, over the gorgeous Brooklyn Bridge, and I can honestly say that in the hour or so that we were in Brooklyn and on the bridge we saw around five hundred Palmeiras fans. Like in Abu Dhabi, they were everywhere.

In 1989 and 1990, Chelsea fans were nowhere to be seen. As we descended towards the City Hall, we passed the spot in May 1990 where I met the only Chelsea fan that I had seen in the ten months of me being in North America. This fact still staggers me. He was an ex-pat who was wearing a Chelsea training top. I shared this story with Glenn. As I told the tale, I could hardly believe what I was saying.

One Chelsea fan in almost ten months.

There should be a royal blue plaque to commemorate this too.

One Vanderbilt.

We took a subway up to the gorgeous interior of Grand Central – what a space – and while Glenn chilled out, I ascended one of the newer skyscrapers in midtown, right opposite Grand Central and the famous Met Life building. A work colleague had recently visited it and recommended it to me. I loved it. It’s roughly the same height as the Empire State Building and towers over the nearby Chrysler Building. There are three observation decks, and each one is magnificent.

The lowest one is full of mirrors which make reality a difficult concept but enhance the feeling of space and light. The middle one contains a room of constantly moving ballons, facing north and the pencil thin new builds overlooking Centeal Park, and this just made me laugh and smile. The highest one is outside, just you and Manhattan.

“Good luck, enjoy the view, don’t fall off.”

The Last Night.

My friend Dom invited us up to his apartment on West 52nd Street for some last night beers and this was a lovely and relaxing evening. We met up at around 7pm and watched as the sun set over Hoboken and The Pallisades in New Jersey, and then night fell with the skyscrapers of Manhattan a fantastic backdrop. I last saw Dom in Wroclaw. We spoke about Manhattan, Chelsea fans in the US, work, mutual friends, and it was a perfect time.

From here, we visited another rooftop bar, this time overlooking Times Square. We chatted to some ES Tunis fans, and we told them that we had seen quite a few of their supporters, too, in Manhattan, in their red and yellow stripes. We spoke about numbers of fans, and I was asked how many Chelsea fans were coming from the UK. I stalled, gulped, and embarrassingly said “about one hundred.”

Suddenly, we didn’t feel like a very big club at all.

Rio de Janeiro.

Ahead of our road trip from Manhattan to Philadelphia, here is a small recap of the only other time that I have seen Flamengo play.

“I again took a cab to the Maracana and was deposited in the same spot as on Thursday for the Fluminense vs, Internacional match, but immediately the mood seemed different. More noise. More supporters. More banners. It seemed that Flamengo really were the city’s team. I felt a little conflicted.

Flu over Fla for me, though.

I had paid a little more for my ticket – £40 – but was rewarded with a sensational view high on the main stand side. I took a lift to the top level and the vast bowl of the Maracana took my breath away. I bought myself a beer – alcohol is allowed in the stands in Brazil – and raised a toast to myself.

“Happy birthday young’un.”

I really loved this game. It was a lot more competitive, and the noise was more constant, and quite breath-taking. Cuiba, from the city of the same name, only had a few hundred fans for this match and I didn’t even try to hear them. Surprisingly, Cuiba scored early on when Derek Lacerda waltzed through and struck a shot into the massive Maracana goals. For aficionados of goals, goal frames, stanchions and goalposts, these are beauties.

“Deep sag.”

It was a decent game. My view of it made it. Maracana, dear reader, is vast.

At half-time, I trotted out to the balcony that overlooked the city. I took a photo of a section of the Maracana roof support, pocked and cracked through time, and contrasted it with the lights shining on a nearby hill. Rio is surrounded by huge rising pillars of black rock. And here I was inside the city’s mammoth concrete cathedral.

The second half began, and the intensity rose and fell. All eyes were on David Luiz. It was so good to see him play again. I last saw him play for Chelsea at the away friendly against St. Patrick’s Athletic in Dublin in 2019. The Fla – or ‘Mengo, take your pick – support never waned and were rewarded when Pedro tucked in an Ayrton cross on the hour. One through-ball from David Luiz will stay in my mind for a while. He was arguably their best player. It ended 1-1. The gate was 54,000. I was expecting more. Flamengo’s support is so huge that I was soon to liken them to Liverpool’s and Manchester United’s support in the UK combined

But there was one more thrill to come.

Whenever I saw photos of Maracana as a child and in later years, I was always mesmerized by its exit ramps, and I tried to imagine how many millions of cariocas – Rio’s inhabitants – had descended those slopes over the years. After the game, I walked them too.

The whole night had been a wonderful birthday present to me.”

Philadelphia.

And here we were, not too long before my 60^th birthday, on a Flixbus from just outside Madison Square Garden to the heart of the City of Brotherly Love, or perhaps – when I visited it with my dear Mum in 2010 – The City of Motherly Love.

I love the American road, and I had driven back from The Bronx in 2010 with my mother on this exact same route that Glenn and I were now taking. In fact, it almost mirrored the bus trip that a few of us took in 2012 after the game at Yankee Stadium against PSG, travelling down to Philly for the MLS All-Star Game in nearby Chester.

That was no ordinary journey, though.

On that memorable trip, my good friend Rick – a history buff – did some research into my relatives’ history and found out the details of their crossing of the Atlantic. The City of Philadelphia steam ship left Liverpool but was ship-wrecked off the coast of Newfoundland at Cape Race on 7 September 1854. Additionally, it was its maiden voyage, a fact that nobody knew until then. Rick found my great great grandfather’s brother listed on a passenger list, and that was good enough for me. The shipwreck was part of our family’s aural history, though the exact facts were never known.

I loved the fact that I was exposed to the intimate detail of that journey, previously only faintly written and quietly whispered in family folklore, for the very first time as I was travelling to Philadelphia over one hundred and fifty years after the crossing.

Like Benjamin and Barbara White in 1854, we were nearing Philadelphia.

We had earlier passed the town of Newark and we spotted the Red Bull stadium – I had sadly watched a Chelsea loss there in 2015 – but then pushed on past the airport, over the Delaware River and headed on into the city. We were deposited in the wonderfully named area called Northern Liberties.

It was superb to be back.

We soon arrived by Uber at our rented house in South Philly, about a mile or so from Steve’s house, at about 3pm. That evening, there was a planned meet at the “Tir Na Nog” bar in the city centre. We knew that we were in for a heavy evening with the game less than twenty-four hours away, so we chilled out for a while. Our house was magnificent, a clean and cosy, yet spacious, terraced house, just perfect.

It’s number on Pierce Street?

2025.

It seemed very appropriate.

We took an Uber to “Tir Na Nog” and we arrived bang on 7pm.

Have I ever mentioned that I work in logistics?

Phackinell.

The hours we spent in “Tir Na Nog” were super. Friends from both the UK and the US mingled and laughed and joked. I met a few Facebook acquaintances for the very first time and it was a blast.

I’d like to thank everyone who bought me a drink, or seven.

Steve from South Philly rolled in. It was here that I first met his wife Teri and their daughters Linda, Elizabeth and Cassidy in 2012. Cassidy, now fourteen, would be with Steve for the Flamengo game. All three daughters love football, and Chelsea of course.

Back in 2012, I remember that I yelled out a full “Zigger Zagger” and scared the girls to death.

No such foolish behaviour this time.

Johnny Dozen was sat, unmoved, in a corner spot the whole evening. It was as if the whole bar was built around him. He is a good mate, and after we closed out the bar at around midnight, we sloped off to “Con Murphy’s” just around the corner.

Here, we go back to 2012, the day before the game in Chester, when I visited “Con Murphy’s” with some other mates.

We were relaxing outside on the pavement, having a bite to eat, supping some ales, when a taxicab pulled up outside the bar. A chap exited the cab with a couple of friends, and I immediately remembered him from a post-baseball game pint the previous night. I had remarked that he was a doppelganger for Carlo Ancelotti. On this occasion, we couldn’t let the moment pass.

As he approached the bar, I started chanting

“Carlo! Carlo! Carlo!”

This elicited further song from The Bobster, Lottinho, Speedy, Jeremy “Army Of One” Willard from Kansas, plus Shawn and Nick from the Boston Blues –

“Carlo, Carlo, Carlo.
King Carlo Has Won The Double.
And The Shit From The Lane.
Have Won Fuck All Again.
King Carlo Has Won The Double.

2, 3, 4

Carlo, Carlo, Carlo.
King Carlo Has Won The Double.
And The Shit From The Lane.
Have Won Fuck All Again.
King Carlo Has Won The Double.

2, 3, 4

Carlo, Carlo, Carlo.
King Carlo Has Won The Double.
And The Shit From The Lane.
Have Won Fuck All Again.
King Carlo Has Won The Double.”

We were roaring with laughter and “Carlo” approached us with an increasingly bemused look on his face. I explained to him about his uncanny resemblance to Carlo and guess what? He was a Scouser. To be fair to him, he took it all in great spirits and even posed for photographs with us. He said he had been mistaken for Jay Leno the previous night.

As one, all of our left eyebrows arched in disbelief.

The look on the faces of the other customers at the tables was priceless.

I felt like saying – “yeah, we serenade random strangers like him all the time back in England.”

Back to 2025, and the little gang of friends that had continued drinking – Johnny Twelve, Hersham Bob, his mate Paul, Glenn, Matt and his wife Rachel – shrunk to just Johnny Twelve and little old me. We chatted to Nicole, who ran “Tir Na Nog”, and it seemed that Chelsea Football Club had not exactly held out the arm of friendship to the Chelsea signature pub in Philadelphia. No contact, no promotions, no merchandise, no nothing.

A shame.

At gone 2am, I took an Uber back to 2025. I was starving so the driver opened his boot and gave me a huge pack of zingy “Cheetos” that I devoured on the way home. There was a further stop at a convenience store for more snacks.

I made it home, but I would soon be up in the morning for the game against Flamengo.

The match against the Brazilian giants was to kick-off at 2pm, which meant that we didn’t really have too long for pre-match drinks. We had planned a little splinter group meet-up at “Oscar’s Tavern”, a cracking little dive bar. Glenn and I were starving so wolfed down a breakfast that did not touch the sides. There were a few drinks with great friends Bob, Alex and Rob from England, Dom from NYC, Alex and his girlfriend from Brooklyn, Kathyryn and Tim from DC, Josh from Minnesota, Johnny Dozen from Long Beach, Jaro and his son Alex from Virginia, his neighbour Joe and his son Luke, and Steve from his house just two miles to the south.

We caught a subway down to the stadium, the sun beating down as we exited, and headed for a quick drink at a huge and impersonal “super bar” that sits close to both the Phillies’ baseball stadium and the Eagles’ NFL stadium. The Flyers’ NHL and the 76ers’ NBA shared stadium is close-by too.

There has always been sport stadia in this part of the city, and it once housed the long-gone JFK Stadium where the US section of “Live-Aid” took place forty years ago.

I wasn’t sure of the numbers involved but as expected, Flamengo fans outnumbered us. It was lovely, though, to spot familiar faces from home and the US as we drifted in and among the crowd.

Time was moving on and there were lines at both the North and West gates. Flamengo fans were everywhere. We joined the line at the West gate. QR codes had appeared on our mobile phones earlier and I was just glad that mine hadn’t disappeared into cyberspace somewhere.

Glenn and I made our way up the various ramps to reach the M11 section, which was a middle-tier just above the large TV screen at the southern end of the stadium. As soon as we reached our row, we saw Andy from Nuneaton, a friend of thirty years.

There was all sorts of hoopla and nonsense happening on the pitch and on the PA as the kick-off approached.

The northern end was full of Flamengo red, but with odd pockets of blue at the edges. The rest of the stadium was dominated by the colour red. Down below us, the Chelsea lower tier was only a third full. The stadium capacity is 68,000 and it looked around two-thirds full.

My initial thoughts about this tournament were ringing true; too many games, tickets too expensive, we are reaching saturation point but FIFA wants more, more, more.

I had mentioned to others that my ideal format for this would have been sixteen teams, four groups of four, the winners to the semi-finals, then the final. Five games maximum.

Is the US getting tired of European teams? I remember a great game in 2009 in Baltimore between Chelsea and Milan, both teams stacked with talent, as many Chelsea as Milan fans in the crowd and a gate of 71,203. And that was a friendly.

Yet this game in Philly was no friendly, it was an official FIFA game, only Chelsea’s second-ever non-friendly match in North America, yet the Chelsea section was a third full. It seemed that, as I knew, many of our US fans had said “no thanks” to this one.

The teams were announced.

Us?

Sanchez

Gusto – Chalobah – Colwill – Cucurella

James – Caicedo

Palmer – Enzo – Neto

Delap

Or something like that. It would take me a good few minutes to notice that Cole Palmer was on the pitch, and even longer to work out his position and role.

Flamengo, now managed by one-season wonder Felipe Luis, were now without David Luiz but boasted the arrival of Jorginho, who – from one hundred yards away – resembled Phil Cool.

I think the heat was getting to me.

Our section seemed to be where most of the UK fans had decided to buy tickets, which were at the cheaper of the two price ranges, and this did not surprise me. We love a bargain in the UK. As is the case, not many of us were wearing Chelsea gear, old habits die hard. I added a muted pink Paul Smith to the array of designer schmutter on display.

On the pitch, we were in the mid-‘seventies inspired semolina white with thin central feint red and green stripes.

The game began, and we played towards the Flamengo fans to the north.

The Brazilians attacked us early, with two shots that did not trouble Robert Sanchez, whose presence between the uprights troubled us.

On five minutes, a great through-ball from Enzo Fernandez gave Liam Delap the chance to run freely at the goal, memories of him at Portman Road in December, and his strong shot tested Agustin Rossi in the Flamengo goal. I think everyone in the stadium and beyond was thrilled by that one play and we hoped for more.

It was an eagerly contested match and on thirteen minutes, after a Flamengo free-kick was cleared, Pedro Neto put pressure on a Flamengo defender. The ball cannoned between the two players, and the ball spun forward, and so did Neto. We watched from afar as he raced away. Sadly, I didn’t have my SLR with me due to restrictions on what I could bring into the stadium, and my pub camera was not called upon to record his fine finish past Rossi.

I didn’t care.

We were 1-0 up.

GET IN YOU FUCKER.

Pandemonium in South Philadelphia.

I snapped the boys celebrating, and that was enough for me.

I whispered to Glenn :

“Back in England, there are fans of other teams saying ‘fucking hell, Chelsea are going to win this too’…”

Flamengo were fluid with the ball and ran at us from all angles, but we generally kept our shape, though it did seem that the heat was hurting us. Flamengo, used to the sultry heat of Rio, were not so deterred.

A long shot from Malo Gusto that did not trouble Rossi was a very rare chance for us.

Palmer was ridiculously quiet and hardly involved.

On thirty-two minutes, there was a hydration break, sponsored by a drinks company, and you just now there will be VAR breaks with sponsors very soon. The pitch was being hydrated too, with the sprinklers on.

With half-time approaching, the typically aggressive Marc Cucurella gave away a free-kick out on the Flamengo left. A deep cross was met by Gerson and his side-footed cross-come-shot bounced high, but Levi Colwill was on the line to head away.

We breathed a hot and sweaty sigh of relief.

Our attacks had petered out by the time the first half ended but Flamengo had stayed strong.

At half-time, Glenn trotted off to get some water for us both and that cost him $15. At least they came in decent aluminium logo’d cups. Elsewhere, a lad had bought three gin and tonics and a Diet Coke and it cost him $89.

There were no changes at half-time, but shadows gave way to sun in section M11, and I was glad to be wearing my Frome Town cap.

In the second-half, Steve and his daughter Cassidy came into our section to watch the game alongside us.

Soon into the second period, with most of the play now happening up the other end of the pitch, we had a major escape, a proper “get out of jail” incident. There was a terrible mix-up between James and Chalobah, which allowed Gerson to settle and steer a shot towards the goal. Thankfully, James had managed to back-peddle and block, but we watched with our hearts in our mouths as the onrushing Gonzalo Plata appeared, ghost-like, at the far post. Incredibly, his touch took the ball wide of the post and the angle must have defeated him.

We had a rare chance when a long Sanchez punt forced Leo Pereira, pressured by Delap, to knock past the post, his ‘keeper fully committed.

On the hour, a brisk succession of passes allowed a chance for Plata but his shot was well tipped over by Sanchez. It was a fine save.

Sadly, two minutes later the game changed. Cucurella gave up space as he was faced with marking two players, and a deep cross from our left was headed back towards goal by Plata. The loose ball – shades of the earlier chance – was tucked home by Bruno Henrique.

My heart sank.

Glenn : “It was coming, wannit?”

Their players all rushed over to the north-west corner, but that area was no Sleepy Hollow. The Flamengo fans were boiling over.

I was reminded of a “Mengo” chant that I had heard continually at the Maracana last summer and now it haunted me.

Enzo Maresca made some changes.

Romeo Lavia for Enzo.

Nicolas Jackson for Delap.

In the next attack, Flamengo won a corner on their right. Another deep cross caused panic, and it was again knocked back into the same area of space by the far post. This time Danilo turned it in.

Once 1-0 up, now 2-1 down, this hurt again.

The Flamengo players raced away to the same corner, again their keeper Rossi, all in yellow, raced up field with arms outstretched and it made me squirm.

It got worse, fucking worse. I didn’t see the incident, but Jackson went in “studs up” and was shown an immediate red.

Twat.

A header – over – from Enzo was a rare chance for us to level the game.

In a forlorn attempt to stem the flow, Maresca changed things again.

Noni Madueke for Enzo.

Marc Guiu for Palmer.

The supporters in M11 were disgruntled and upset, and it got even worse.

On eight-three minutes, Flamengo burst through into our box and after a rather fortuitous bobble from a shot, Wallace Yan steadied himself and slotted the ball in, again from the same part of the box.

Again, Rossi ran forward, arms raised, and I felt ill.

The game petered out and that was that.

The gate was given as 54,019 and I struggled to believe that only 14,000 seats were empty.

More like 40,000 at most.

We slowly walked back to the subway stop and all of us reckoned that it seemed a much longer walk than before.

“Probably because we lost.”

It was only 4.30pm or so, and so we met up another exquisite dive bar (“Bring your snorkel, Glenn”) called “Bob’s & Barbara’s” which soon got us smiling again. A few beers there did the trick, and it was great to meet up and chat with my old friend Mike and his son Matthew from New York, and another Matthew from South Carolina, who is a massive fan of international football, unlike me, and was soon off to his 69^th US game in Kansas, or somewhere.

“Just make sure they change ends at half-time in that one, mate.”

We spent a good amount of time there and could have stayed longer, but Steve walked Glenn and yours truly over to South Street where we devoured our first cheesesteak of the trip at “Jim’s” where we had visited in 2012.

“Steak, onions, Whiz.”

It was phantastic.

Our first match in Philly was done and dusted, but we now had to get something from Tuesday’s late game against Esperance of Tunis to ensure our safe passage into the last sixteen of this cup.

And that, my friends, is another story.

NEW YORK 2025

RIO DE JANEIRO 2024

PHILADELPHIA 2025 : A NIGHT WITH FRIENDS

PHILADELPHIA 2025 : CHELSEA VS. FLAMENGO

Tales From The Grand Old Lady

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Chris Axon

Everton vs. Chelsea : 22 December 2024.

Last season, the Everton away game was again just before Christmas, on Sunday 10 December, and at the time it was to be our last-ever visit to the Grand Old Lady on Goodison Road. I went into that game expecting it to be so and took tons of photos to commemorate my last-ever visit. Yet, between the time of the game and the day of posting my match report, five days later, it was announced by Everton Football Club that they would be staying one more year at the revered old stadium and would move into Bramley Moore Dock in August 2025.

Ironically, another recent visit had the feel of a potential “last-ever” game too, the match in May 2022, when Everton were deep in the relegation mire. On that day, Frank Lampard’s Everton squeaked home 1-0 and lived to fight again.

It seems like Everton, or rather Goodison, has been messing about with my brain for a few years now. God knows what actual Everton fans have been experiencing.

I was pretty happy with the 105 photos that I posted for last season’s match and I had a feeling that I might well match this high figure on this occasion.

Goodison Park and I go back a long way, to a match that was shown on ITV “live” on Sunday 16 March 1986, but many fans of my generation first experienced Goodison on Saturday 22 December 1984 – forty years ago to the day – and it is the one game that I wish that I had seen. The visit in 2024 would be my twenty-fourth Chelsea game at Goodison, but the game on that Saturday forty years ago was arguably our best performance there in the past four decades.

At the time, I was so annoyed that I was not able to attend the game at Goodison in 1984. I had returned home the previous weekend from my college town of Stoke, and would be listening-in on the portable radio as I did a shift in my father’s menswear shop in Frome’s town centre. I occasionally helped out at Xmas time when things got a little busier. But I was so annoyed that I was back in Somerset. It would have been easy to travel up by train from Stoke to Liverpool had I still been in The Potteries.

My diary from 1984 explains “the saga” at Goodison Park, and how I “went wild” every time we scored, especially when a score of Everton 3 Chelsea 1 was corrected to 2-2. We won the game 4-3, with Gordon Davies getting a hat-trick and Colin Pates getting one. Graeme Sharp scored two for the home team and Paul Bracewell scored the other. I had predicted a gate of 24,000 so was very happy with the attendance of 29,800. I went out in Frome later that night and had way too much to drink. It was our first away win in the league in 1984/85 though. These things have to be celebrated surely. Those that went to the match in 1984 often tell the story of all sorts of missiles being launched at the tightly packed Chelsea terrace and the seats high above the goal from the home enclosure in front of the main stand; pool balls, flares, golf balls with nails. Friendly bunch, Everton.

For the game in 2024 we set off early. I collected PD and his son Scott at 6am and Parky at 6.30pm. We breakfasted at a deadly quiet Strensham between 7.30am and 8am. I was parked up at the usual Stanley Park car park at 10.30am – a £13 fee – but as we made our way north to Goodison, the wind howled, and the rain fell. In Almaty there was no wind chill and there was no dampness in the air, and I coped OK. After a minute of being exposed to the bitter chill of Stanley Park, I was shivering like a fool. The rain seemed to seep into my bones. I was reminded of Turf Moor in 2017. We came off the vast expanse of the park and walked alongside more sheltered and tree-lined roads.

While the others went off to find shelter in “The Abbey” pub on Walton Lane, I met up briefly with a photographer pal of mine, David. We had bumped into each other at last season’s game and had kept in touch ever since. He often takes photos pitch side at the four grounds in Liverpool and Manchester. He was queuing up, hiding from the rain, underneath the towering main stand that rises dramatically from the pavement on Goodison Road like no other stand in England. Only Ibrox come close in the entire UK. He was after a good “speck” – Scouse slang for “spot” – behind the Park End goal. We had planned for him to take a few photos of my pals and I during the game.

As I made my way to the pub, I spotted a former Everton player from my early years, Mike Lyons.

“Hello Mike.”

No answer.

That’s because I quickly realised it was Martin Dobson.

Fackinell.

I dodged the rain and made my way inside the pub that was surprisingly quiet. We stayed inside from 11pm to 1pm, and the small, thin, cosy pub soon became rammed. We were made welcome, though. I chatted to some Evertonians from Aberdare in South Wales who were staying over. Jimmy the Greek, Nick the Greek and Doncaster Pail had joined us, and Ian then arrived with two random Evertonians he had met on the train and who had subsequently shared a cab together from Lime Street.

They are a lot more friendlier in 2024 than in 1984.

If anything, the inter-city rivalry between Merseyside’s blues and reds has heightened and intensified and turned nasty since 1984. I joked with Jimmy and commented that Evertonians hark on about Liverpool’s fan base now residing in Norway, and Liverpool bite back by saying that Everton’s global reach now goes as far as North Wales.

David, the photographer arrived with a programme for me, but reported that his “speck” was in front of the Gwladys Street, so no candid photos of us on this day.

Tommie and Chris – the brothers Grim, Tommie Chelsea and Chris Everton – arrived in the rain and I passed over spares. Then, I got drenched on the short walk to the ground, where I was serenaded by a “Town Called Malice” – an odd choice so far north – by a band playing in the fan park behind the impressive Dixie Dean statue.

There was time for one final, sad, circumnavigation of The Grand Old Lady.

The Winslow Hotel, where I popped in with my mate Francis for a drink before a game at Anfield in 1994, and if my fictional piece from 2012 is to be believed, where my father visited on his one visit to Goodison Park in around 1942, mid RAF training on The Wirral.

To the left, Jock spotted the frosted glass windows of a local hostelry. Without any words being exchanged, Jock quickly headed inside, his two friends left outside in his wake.

“A quick pint, Half Pint?” asked Hank to Reg. “It appears our Scottish friend is in need of liquid refreshment.”

They spotted Jock dart in the bar to the right of the main entrance of The Winslow Hotel and they quickly followed suit.

“Jock’s at the bar, Half Pint – this is a rare sight indeed. Let’s hope he doesn’t forget us.”

The cavernous bar was incredibly noisy and the three pals struggled to hear themselves be heard above the din of orders being taken, jokes being shared, vulgar belly laughs, shouts and groans. A young lad strode through the bar, bedecked in Everton favours – the blue and white standing out against the dismal colours of wartime England – and attempted to sell match programmes. He was not faring well. The locals were more intent on drinking. An elderly gent, with glasses and a pencil thin moustache, spoke engagingly to Reg about Dixie Dean, the great Everton centre-forward, who once scored 60 goals in a 42 game season.

As his knowledge of football wasn’t great, Reg wasn’t sure if this was the same Dixie Dean who had been ridiculed in the schoolboy poem of his youth –

“Dixie Dean from Aberdeen.
He tried to score a goal.
He missed his chance.
And pee’d his paints.
And now he’s on the dole.”

Talk of the imminent football match was minimal, though. It seemed that just being in an alien environment, so different from each of their hometowns, was amusement enough. Hank looked at his watch and signalled to the others to finish their drinks. Outside, the rain had started to fall. The three friends quickly rushed across to the stand and did not notice that the narrow street, darkened under the shadow of the structure, was busy with an array of match day activity; grizzly old men selling programmes, young boys selling cheap paper rosettes, wise-cracking spivs selling roasted chestnuts and cigarettes and young girls selling newspapers.

The main stand, and the elevator that I took to watch a game from the top balcony with my mate Pete in 1992 when Robert Fleck scored. The church of St. Luke the Evangelist, with its café and memorabilia shop that I visited in 2022.

The huge images of Dean, Sharp, Latchford, Royle, Young and Hickson towering over rooftops.

The Holy Trinity statue.

The pavement alongside where some local scallies had eyed me up and down on my second visit in late 1986 and sneered “that jacket is so fookin’ red” and I thought I might be in for a hiding.

Gwladys Street, where I walked with Josh and Courtney in October and where Courtney took a photo of two lads, in red and blue, playing football outside two houses with red and blue doors, a perfect image.

A turn into Bullens Road and the away end. Memories of a beautiful visit with my then girlfriend Judy’s young football-mad son James, aged just ten, his first-ever game in 1998, and then a repeat in 2006 with him, the 3-2 cracker.

The rain was bucketing down and the stewards just wanted us inside, so there was no camera search.

For one last time, I was in.

The familiar steps, the crowded concourse, the wooden floorboards of the Archibald Leitch Stand, our seats in Row B, effectively the front row.

I love Goodison. It’s obvious, right? But some hate it. I thought of them when I realised that a roof support was right in front of my seat, blocking a good deal of the pitch.

Fackinell.

I was lined up with Alan, John and Gary to my left and with Eck and Steely from Glasgow to my right. After being given a word of warning about using my SLR by both the chief steward and an over-zealous ambulance woman (!), I played cat and mouse with them all game long, and Eck was able to step in front of me to avoid me being seen. I am pretty sure I relied on Eck for this superb defensive partnership against prying eyes last season too.

Like Nesta and Cannavaro in their prime.

Eck and I found ourselves lip-syncing to “If You Know Your History”, it’s easily done.

Then, the big big moment…the sirens and “Z Cars” for one last time at Goodison.

Chills.

There is nothing better.

I have no doubt that Everton will keep this tune as a key part of their match-day routine at Bramley Moore. I am sure when it is played at the first-ever game, it will seem like the torch has been handed on.

Incidentally, the new stadium :

I love the location.

I am a little worried about parking and traffic flow.

The outside looks fantastic.

The inside seating bowl looks rather bland.

But I like the steepness of the rake of the terraces.

I like that – at the moment – the blue seats are not spoiled with sponsors names or other silliness.

How I wish that a few Leitch cross struts could be repositioned at key places on the balcony wall at the new digs.

With the kick-off time approaching, I checked our team.

Sanchez

Disasi – Colwill – Tosin – Gusto

Caicedo – Enzo

Neto – Palmer – Sancho

Jackson

Everton were a mixture of footballers and former footballers, some familiar, some not and how on Earth is Ashley Young still playing?

Both teams wore white shorts. Brian Moore would be turning in his grave.

Everybody standing, the rain starting to get worse, the game began.

Whisper it, but a win at Goodison would send us top, if only for a few hours.

We began the livelier and attacked the deep-sitting Everton lines in front of the Gwladys Street. There was a shot, wide, from Cole Palmer, and a couple of attacking half-chances involving Nicolas Jackson and Pedro Neto.

The rain was heavier now and seemed to be aimed right at us in the Bullens Upper. I sheltered behind Eck. The wind was blustery and seemed to change direction at will. Playing conditions, although not treacherous, were difficult, and it made for periods of messy football. The Everton crowd, not exactly buoyed by the news of the latest take-over, soon quietened down.

Neto had began the game as our liveliest player on the right and, after good play by Moises Caicedo, he fed in Palmer, and there was a low cross towards Jackson, but Jordan Pickford saved well.

We played well in short spells, and from a corner, Jackson smacked the post from close range and Pickford closed angles before Malo Gusto could attack the rebound.

Everton had been very defensive and offered very little. It was so noticeable that the Everton support were cheering defensive clearances.

“God, I know everyone loves their clubs and their teams, but imagine turning up to watch this every two weeks?”

At last, an effort on our goal; someone called Orel Mangala forcing a very fine stop from Robert Sanchez. Just after, another Everton effort, and Sanchez thwarted Jack Harrison from close range.

It had been a poor first-half and was met with moans and grumbles by the Chelsea faithful at the break.

Neto had been my favourite, and we loved the audacious piece of skill when he controlled the ball by knocking it back over his shoulder to fox his marker. Caicedo was strong. Sancho had a lot of the ball but was finding it difficult to get the best of Old Man Young. Disasi touched the ball so many times it honestly felt like he was our main playmaker. We cried out for a little more urgency.

Just before the second half began, Eck, Steely and I were now lip-syncing to “True Faith” by New Order and we hoped our faith would be truly rewarded.

“That’s the price that we all pay.
And the value of destiny comes to nothing.
I can’t tell you where we’re going.
I guess there was just no way of knowing.”

The weather was still wild. There were hints of a blue sky and sun, but only fleeting. At times the sky over the huge main stand roof took on a lavender hue. This was Goodison Park in the depths of winter, in the depths of Liverpool, in its unique setting. The wind grew stronger and the rain came again.

Football. There is something about it, in these old weather-beaten stadia, that absolutely stirs the soul.

Bizarrely, to me at least, it was Everton who created more chances of note in an increasingly worrisome second-half. On fifty minutes, a huge jolt to our confidence as Everton really should have scored. At last the home crowd made some noise that the old ground deserved.

Although Sancho looked a little more lively down below us – in an area of the Goodison Park pitch that always invokes of Eden Hazard twisting and turning – as the second-half continued, our link-up play was poor. Palmer was having a very average game, and this seemed to affect our confidence.

Some substitutions on seventy-five minutes.

Christopher Nkunku for Jackson.

Noni Madueke for Neto.

Everton attacked down our left, and a shot from Martin Gore lookalike Jesper Lindstrom was expertly stopped by Sanchez, but the block on the follow-up effort from Tosin was exceptional.

It was at this stage that we all began thinking that we would be happy with a 0-0, a point, and consolidation of a second place finish.

There were minimal minutes added on at the end of the ninety. It was if the referee Chris Kavanagh was happy to save us any more pain.

It ended 0-0.

As the legions of home and away fans departed, I loitered with my camera and tried my best to capture a few haunting images of my final ten minutes in a stadium that I have so enjoyed visiting over the past thirty-eight years.

My final Everton vs. Chelsea record at Goodison Park :

Played : 24

Won : 8

Drew : 7

Lost : 9

For : 23

Against : 26

I took some inevitable shots of the trademark Leitch cross struts on the balcony wall, and I was reminded of when I pinned my “VINCI PER NOI” banner on this section for our last great game at Goodison, the 3-0 triumph late in 2016/17. My words illustrate the joy of that day.

At the final whistle, a triumphal roar, and then my eyes were focussed on Antonio Conte. He hugged all of the Chelsea players, and slowly walked over to join his men down below us, only a few yards away from the touchline. With just four games remaining, and our lead back to seven points, the joy among the team and supporters was palpable. Conte screamed and shouted, his eyes bulging. He jumped on the back of Thibaut Courtois. His smiles and enthusiasm were so endearing.

Altogether now – “phew.”

The songs continued as we slowly made our way out into the street. A message came through from my good friend Steve in Philadelphia –

“Chris, the image that just flashed on my screen was beautiful. A shot of a cheering Antonio Conte, cheering the away fans, with the Vinci banner in the background. Absolutely perfect shot.”

There was time for one last photo of me with the Gwladys Street in the background, and then one last shot of the exit gate in the Bullens Upper, a photo that I had taken just over twelve months earlier.

But now, it was final.

Thanks Goodison, for the memories, from Reg Axon in around 1942 and from me from 1986 to 2024.

Tales From A Cold Night

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Everton : 15 April 2024.

After the game at Bramall Lane on Sunday 7 April, I was again treated to a two-game football weekend. But this was no Saturday and Sunday double-header. No, nothing as easy as that. With modern football being modern football, this was one that featured matches on a Friday and a Monday.

The reward for working my first five-day week for a month – what a slog – was a Friday evening at Frome Town with a game against Bishops Cleeve, a team from near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. After the dropped points at Exmouth Town the previous Saturday, this was a match that my local team just had to win. Thankfully, a Sam Meakes goal mid-way through the first half gave the home team a slender 1-0 win. However, it was a tough match, despite the visitors having a player sent off just before half-time. In the second half, the visitors enjoyed much of the possession, and everyone became more and more nervous with each passing minute. Thankfully, Frome’s defence were resolute and kept attacks at bay. The Frome ‘keeper Kyle Phillips, in fact, did not have too much to do. Frome, defending deeper than we thought necessary, took all three points, which kept the team at the top of the Southern League South. The attendance was a very pleasing 690, which took the home average up to 483 for the season. Frome have just three games left; if we win them all, we will be automatically promoted.

Saturday and Sunday came and went, but with some pretty hilarious football results along the way.

Newcastle United 4 Tottenham Hotspur 0.

Liverpool 0 Crystal Palace 1.

West Ham 0 Fulham 2.

Arsenal 0 Aston Villa 2.

I worked another early shift on the Monday. At 2pm, I set off from Melksham in Wiltshire with PD and LP. There was a little chat about the evening’s game with Everton, who last won a league game at Stamford Bridge almost thirty years ago. Did I expect us to win against the SW6-shy Toffees?

Yes. There I said it.

I dropped the lads off near “McGettigans” on Fulham Broadway at 4.30pm so they could enjoy a quiet drink with Salisbury Steve. My pre-match was spent at Stamford Bridge where I took a few photographs of the pre-match scene. Overhead, there was a clear blue sky, but despite the Spring sun, it was bitter. In fact, it was so cold, thanks to a raw wind, that I had to disappear inside the megastore for twenty minutes to keep warm. It’s a place that I hardly ever visit these days. I am still trying to get over the sight of a bloke, probably in his early thirties, with a small Chelsea crest painted on his face. Outside under old The Shed wall, I bumped into a few friends before I finally made my way inside the ground at 7.30pm.

As I walked up the steps to the MHU and made my way to my seat, I was serenaded – appropriately enough – by “Blue Monday” by New Order.

Perfect.

I wondered if there might be a Chelsea-themed sequence of songs, but no. However, the next three songs were decent enough.

“Going Underground” by The Jam.

“Echo Beach” by Martha And The Muffins.

“Call Me” by Blondie.

Ah, four favourites. Four classics. The person choosing the set list certainly knew his target audience; it always seems that the match-goers around me in The Sleepy Hollow are children of the ’eighties, in thoughts, words and deeds.

Then, “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits.

Ugh. Oh well, four out of five ain’t bad.

It was still light as the kick-off approached. The lightshow and the flickering flames did not have quite the same impact in the evening dusk.

The teams appeared.

Us?

Petrovic

Gusto – Silva – Chalobah – Cucarella

Gallagher – Caicedo

Madueke – Palmer – Mudryk

Jackson

Them?

A smattering of familiar names, a few young ones, and two old ones; Seamus Coleman, aged thirty-five, and Ashley Young, aged thirty-eight. Young always looks like he has his legs on incorrectly.

Just before kick-off, Tommie Senior and Tommie Junior – from Riverside in California and last spotted at Sheffield United – appeared twenty-yards away in seats to my left. It would be their first match at Stamford Bridge; I had managed to get them tickets via a mate. They looked ridiculously excited. Alan and Clive sat alongside PD and little old me, the first time that all four of us had been present at Chelsea for a while.

The game began at 8pm. I wasn’t keen that we were attacking the Matthew Harding in the first-half.

Everton, dressed in an all pink ensemble that reminded me of Daytona Beach in the late ‘eighties, began quite brightly. In front of the three thousand away fans, a cross came in from the Everton right – that man Coleman – but Beto thankfully stabbed his shot over the bar.

On thirteen minutes, a magnificent Chelsea move was played out in front of us. Cole Palmer received the ball forty yards out, nut-megged one of the young Evertonians – Jarrad Branthwaite – and adeptly back heeled a pass to Nicolas Jackson who quickly returned the ball to Palmer. I felt myself relax. Palmer’s body language reeked of self-belief and as he coolly and calmly slotted the ball towards the far post with a delicate flick of his left-foot wand, it seemed churlish for me to be worried about the outcome. The goal quickly came.

Chelsea 1 Everton 0.

Palmer again, ole, ole.

It was almost too easy.

Alan : THTCAUN.

Chris : COMLD.

Just after, Noni Madueke, who had begun positively, drilled a ball in from the wing. From our position high above the corner flag it appeared that the forward movement of Palmer had hindered the path of the ball into the net. Palmer looked momentarily deflated.

On eighteen minutes, we attacked again. Moises Caicedo to Mykhailo Mudryk and a burst down below us, and a pass to Jackson. The young striker’s shot was parried by Jordan Pickford, who used to be a goalkeeper. The ball sat up nicely for Palmer to nod emphatically home from just inside the six-yard box.

Chelsea 2 Everton 0.

Palmer again, ole, ole.

Alan had noted that his two goals had been scored by his left peg and his head, and so was already thinking ahead about a perfect hat-trick.

It was an open game. Chances were shared. Mudryk raced back well to hack away a goal bound effort off the line at the Shed End. Jackson, not shy to come forward, fired a blooter just over the bar.

On twenty-nine minutes, a terrible pass out of defence by Pickford was pounced on by Palmer of all people. He instantaneously accessed the situation. His GPS was spot on, as he quickly lifted the ball high over Pickford’s gurning face, and the flight of the ball immediately impressed me.

…thinking : ”this looks in.”

Yep, the ball dropped into the empty net.

A roar from the Chelsea crowd.

Chelsea 3 Everton 0.

Palmer again, ole, ole.

I looked over towards the Two Tommies; oh boy, they were loving it.

Alan : “was that his right foot?”

Chris : “yep.”

Alan : “Perfect.”

Stamford Bridge had taken a while to make some worthwhile noise, but now the place was rocking to one or two “Carefrees.”

We thought that the visitors had pulled a goal back but I quickly spotted a raised flag for offside.

Phew.

To their credit, Everton kept attacking, but they looked awfully exposed when we got on the front foot. On forty-four minutes, Marc Cucarella – most definitely an improved player from last season – sent over a cross towards the near post. Jackson brought the ball down with a really exquisite move, and swivelled smoothly before slotting the ball home. This was another beautiful goal. What a performance.

Chelsea 4 Everton 0.

At half-time, all was well in the world. I joked with the lads that I had not taken too many photographs of the game thus far, but 90% of them had been of goal celebrations. The actual breakdown was as follows :

Total photos : 58

Goal celebrations : 28

So, the actual percentage was 48% but never let the truth ruin a good line. In truth, we hadn’t exactly peppered the Everton goal with shots, but we found ourselves four goals to the good. In a season – or more – when we have bemoaned our lack of quality in front of goal, it was lovely to see our goals to shots ratio increase, if only for one game.

Baby steps and all that.

The second-half began and I was dreaming of a cricket score. I am sure that I was not alone. The new Chelsea midfield of Caicedo and Gallagher was performing well, allowing others to move forward to exploit the tiring Everton defence. We kept to the same script and were rewarded in the sixty-fourth minute when Madueke tumbled after a crude challenge by James Tarkowski. The referee quickly pointed to the spot.

The madness that then ensued caused unnecessary tensions in the stadium, both on the pitch and off it. While Palmer, who had fallen just before the foul on Madueke, gathered himself, there seemed to be a feisty altercation on the penalty spot between Madueke, Jackson, Silva and Gallagher. In everyone’s mind, Palmer was the obvious – and only – choice for the penalty. Madueke and Jackson seemed to have other opinions. Silva and Gallagher wrested the ball away from Madueke, who flounced off in a pathetic strop.

Palmer placed the ball on the spot.

Palmer scored.

Chelsea 5 Everton 0.

Palmer again, ole, ole.

Alan asked me to name the last occasion that we were 5-0 up at home in the league. I could only think of that magnificent game – better than this one – in November 2016 when we beat Everton 5-0.

(The correct answer was Norwich City in 2021 when we went in to win 7-0.)

Mauricio Pochettino made some changes.

Carney Chukwuemeka for Madueke.

Madueke had played well, but had blotted his copybook with his stupid tantrum on the penalty spot. I expected a few boos, but there were hardly any.

The Everton fans, wh had sreadfastly resisted the desire to return to Merseyside began to leave en masse.

More changes came.

Cesare Casadie for Palmer.

What a player this young lad is. Twenty goals for our number twenty this season, level with a certain Manchester City totem. The applause for Palmer was loud and sustained.

Ben Chilwell for Mudryk.

Not Mudryk’s best game, not his worst, he was applauded too.

Thiago Silva was serenaded on many occasions during the game, especially with him defending down below us in the second-half. I am sure that everyone wants to let him know how much he is loved in these last few weeks of his Chelsea career.

Two more late changes.

Alfie Gilchrist for Gusto.

Another decent outing for young Gusto, who was warmly applauded.

Deivid Washington for Jackson.

Jackson is getting there, there are improvements taking place, and he was applauded too.

In the ninetieth minute, a cross from the left by Chilwell eventually fell to Alfie Gilchrist. The youngster took aim and fired a strong shot past the hapless Pickford and a huge roar enveloped the stadium. It was, of course, his first goal in the first team. The scorer raced towards the corner flag and seemed to be accelerating as he ran on. I thought he was going to keep on running onto the West Stand forecourt and down the Fulham Road before eventually stopping at “Chubby’s Grill” or whatever it is called these days for a hot dog and onions.

Fackinell.

The joy in Alfie’s celebrations warmed us all up on a very fine night at a cold – Cole Palmer cold – Stamford Bridge.

Whisper it, but our team is slowly coming together. Those glimpses of quality are becoming more frequent. In our last two home games in the league we have scored ten goals. We have a difficult run of games to finish this season, but let’s see how high we can get.

Next up we meet Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, bloody Wembley.

See you there.

Tales From A Long Day

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Chris Axon

Liverpool vs. Chelsea : 31 January 2024.

Although our heads seem full of the two domestic cups for the moment, here was a sobering trip back to normality and the league campaign. They really don’t get much tougher than this one.

Liverpool vs. Chelsea.

Gulp.

I was up early, at 5.30am, and I soon found myself outside PD’s house in Frome at seven o’clock. Salisbury Steve had driven up to Frome to join us and, despite being pleased to see Steve, there were a few special words for PD.

“Happy birthday mate.”

It was PD’s sixty-second birthday. I am not sure how that is possible, but it is. It doesn’t seem too long ago that I first met PD on a train home from Cardiff City almost forty years ago.

We left Somerset behind us and soon crossed the border into Wiltshire where I picked up Parky at just after 7.30am. By a twist of fate, the game at Liverpool was on the seventh anniversary of a match that we had attended at Anfield during our championship season of 2016/17. That was a Wednesday too.

And just as we celebrated PD’s fifty-fifth birthday with a famous pub-crawl in central Liverpool in 2017, we were also looking to partake in something similar for his sixty-second birthday. In 2017, we visited four pubs on Dale Street. I had a similar strategy for 2024.

Regardless of the football, we all hoped for a decent time.

There was heavier traffic than usual. However, after stopping for the usual breakfast at Strensham Services between Tewkesbury and Worcester, I was happy with our progress. We didn’t speak too much about the game. I did utter an opinion that most Chelsea supporters, I suspected, would swap a loss at Anfield – “even a heavy loss” – for a triumph in the up-coming League Cup Final.

It was a familiar drive into Liverpool. We crossed over Queens Drive at The Old Swan rather than take a right turn to either Anfield or Goodison and after a few miles, the huge carcass of the former Littlewoods Pools building appeared on our left. This was once an impressive art deco structure but has been abandoned for many years. It is currently awaiting a revamp as a media and studio centre.

We had a little chat about the football pools, and how Littlewoods and Vernons were based in Liverpool, whereas Zetters was based in London. I was reminded that the former Liverpool Polytechnic was re-named as John Moores University after the first owner of Littlewoods. The buildings of this university dominate the final approach into the city. John Moores was a director and chairman of Everton at various times from 1960 to 1977. His nephew, David Moores, was Liverpool chairman from 1991 to 2010.

One wonders how much pools money was filtered into the support of the city’s two football clubs over the years.

Driving into the city was easy. I easily spotted the two cathedrals. I dropped down the hill but Everton’s new stadium was just out of sight to our right. My route took me close to Walker Art Gallery. In March of last year, on my way home for a short break in Newcastle and Edinburgh, I had dropped into Liverpool’s city centre to visit an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery about casuals. I spent around ninety minutes, appropriately enough, at the exhibition which detailed the rise and spread of casual subculture, which some say began on Liverpool’s Scotland Road in 1977. Although, the geographical roots are often argued, Merseyside is surely the spiritual home of the casual movement.

I really enjoyed the scope and detail of the exhibition, which I caught during the last few days of its run. Not only were there detailed descriptions of how football and fashion fused together, there were vintage original pieces of clothing from the original era, plus some excellent pieces of art from the football world. I was pleased to see a copy of “The Face” from 1983 that I still own to this day. The exhibition was superb and I loved it. It was right up my Gwladys Street.

I include some photographs.

I then drove within touching distance of Lime Street station, always the scene of much shenanigans in past decades. I remember arriving there for the first time in May 1985 and how I gingerly caught a bus up to Anfield for my very first game in the city. I remember putting on a “Scouse accent” as I paid the driver for my ticket. These were nervous steps for me. Liverpool had a gruesome reputation as being unsafe for away fans, despite the media’s view of the city’s football fans as being cheeky rascals and no more. I remember seeing a Chelsea fan on the bus that I recognised at the time. I have not seen him for years and years so I was pleased to see him at Middlesbrough a few weeks ago. I was pleased that he still goes.

Around that time, Liverpool had been the dominant force in English football since the mid-‘seventies. In those four seasons of First Division football from 1984/85 to 1987/88, I went to every Chelsea game at Anfield. It seemed a massive match in those times.

1984/85 : I travelled up by train from Stoke-on-Trent and watched from a packed away corner as we narrowly lost 4-3. This was a Saturday morning game, with the risk of crowd trouble ruling out a later kick-off. I was surprised how quiet The Kop was.

1985/86 : another trip up by train from Stoke, another morning game, and a fantastic 1-1 draw, with Pat Nevin knocking in a very late equaliser. There were around five hundred Rangers fans in our part of the Kemlyn Road. When the goal went in, at our end, I literally could not move.

1986/87 : another morning game, this time on a Sunday afternoon, and live on TV. A poor performance from us, we lost 0-3. I would later spot myself on the TV coverage on two separate occasions, a big thrill back then.

1987/88 : I travelled up from Somerset for this Sunday game, again on TV, and in a close match we narrowly lost 1-2 despite going ahead in the first-half, the winning goal being scored excruciatingly late.

These four away games have taken on a seminal role in my own Chelsea story. I enjoy so many memories from those four seasons; the players, the songs, the tribalism, the fashions, the real element of danger, the sense of place, the whole nine yards. They seemed huge, they seemed significant, as though I was taking part in some sort of Footballing Zeitgeist.

Sigh.

Back to fucking 2024.

The plan was to leave Dodge at 7am and be parked-up at midday. I pulled in to the car park opposite our Premier Inn at 11.58am.

It’s a good job I work in logistics.

The first two pubs of PD’s birthday pub crawl were revisits from 2017.

“The Vernon.”

Famous for its sloping floors, it was eerily similar to seven years ago; quiet, save for a few foreign Liverpool fans dotted around. The floor was sloping and so were my two pints of “Estrella”, sloping nicely straight down my neck.

“Thomas Rigby’s.”

We sat at almost the same table as 2017, but – alas – the jovial Evertonian landlord had moved on. It was quieter than seven years ago. A pint of “Prava” and a pint of “Madri” went down very well. We were starting to relax nicely. This was Steve’s first-ever visit to Liverpool. I tried not to bore him to death with intricate details of too many past trips.

“The Saddle.”

This one was right next to pub number two, no more than a ten second walk away. We arrived here just before 3pm so I soon sorted out tickets on my ‘phone for the Aston Villa cup replay which had gone on sale at that time. Fair play to Villa for knocking a further £5 off the cheap price of £25 for Chelsea season ticket holders. The drinks – another “Madri” for me – were going down well.

“Ye Hole In Ye Wall.”

And this pub was right next to pub number three. This is allegedly the oldest pub in Liverpool, dating from 1720. As soon as we walked in, we loved its warmth and cosiness. A special mention of my mate Francis – with us in 2017 – who got a round in, remotely. Top man. We were joined, in the cosy snug, by our friend Kim from California, now Liverpool, who came by to wish PD a “happy birthday” and to enjoy a few laughs. I managed to snag a ticket for Kim for Anfield last year, but we were not so fortunate this season.

“The Denbigh Castle.”

And this was right next to pub number four. It was now 5pm, but the game was still hours away. It seems pointless, now, moaning about it but instead of having evening games at 7.30pm, or 7.45pm, or even 8pm, games are now held on occasion at 8.15pm, as was this one. It’s fucking pathetic. Just another twist of the knife. As if travelling large distances for midweek games isn’t difficult enough.

PD was happy because they sold “Thatchers” in this pub. I am surprised they sell it in Liverpool.

We were joined here by my friend Brij, originally from California but now residing in Boston and working for the NHL Boston Bruins. I first met Brji in Ann Arbor in 2016 ahead of our friendly against Real Madrid (still, officially, our largest ever paid attendance of 105,826) and we have loosely followed each other on Instagram for a while. He recently told me that he was over in Europe on a short break and I was lucky to be able to spirit up a ticket in the away end out of the ether. He was buzzing with excitement. It was great to see him. I was pleased that he shared many of my dislikes of modern sport. I could see that we would get on fine.

“The Tempest On Tithebarn.”

We arrived here around 6pm. This was a modern pub, unlike all the others, and the décor was a little odd. It was strange – or maybe not, in fact – that we had not spoken too much about the game that would be occupying our hearts and minds a few hours later. Another lager. Phew.

“The Railway.”

One final pub, all of a lengthy one-minute walk from the previous one, but still time to lose PD and Parky on the way. The lagers were starting to slosh around a little now. It was 7pm, and the final call of a pub-crawl that had been really enjoyable. This was a lovely old pub with wooden panels and glistening mirrors and beer pumps. This one was a quick visit. I didn’t even take my coat off.

At about 7.20pm, Brij volunteered to sort out an Uber up to Anfield. We waited outside for a few minutes, and thankfully one arrived. We were deposited near The Kop at 7.50pm. Within ten minutes we were inside the away concourse. The five of us were split up. I made it to my seat – 140, Row 18, a decent seat in line with the six-yard box – just after the “YNWA” stuff.

I didn’t fancy bringing my SLR on such a busy afternoon and evening, so my pub camera had to suffice. I didn’t take too many shots.

Neither did Chelsea.

The game began and I did my best to try to work out who was where, how, why and what for.

Petrovic

Disasi – Silva – Badiashile – Chilwell

Gallagher – Caicedo – Enzo

Sterling – Palmer – Madueke

The game began with us facing The Kop. Behind me was the newly opened top tier of the Anfield Road Stand. Liverpool began strongly, as expected and attacked at will. Petrovic was soon called into action.

In one of our early attacks, Raheem Sterling advanced on the left with a barrage of boos cascading down from The Kop, and his pass inside found the raiding run of Conor Gallagher. He went deep inside the box, but fell. From one hundred yards away, my view was not great. “No penalty” and the game continued.

Liverpool continued their ascendency, their players fleet-footed, ours with boots full of lead. Not long after, Darwin Nunez launched one from well outside the box, our defensive so easily breached, but the hard strike clipped the bar. The same player again slipped through our defensive line after a long ball from deep. His low angled shot from in front of us was thankfully turned onto the far post by Petrovic.

This was just horrible.

Nunez was shooting for fun. We seemed miles off the pace. We found it impossible to build moves. It just wasn’t working.

On twenty-two minutes, Diogo Jota slalomed his way through our defence, past Thiago Silva and Benoit Badiashile, and slammed the ball low past Petrovic.

It was on the cards.

There was, however, the slight hope that VAR might assist our cause with a long check for handball. Nah, the goal stood.

More Liverpool efforts, Petrovic the hero a few times.

In the away end, the minimal singing has stopped. I stood in silence.

On thirty-nine minutes, utter calamity. Moises Caicedo gave up possession cheaply, and Liverpool exploited acres of space on our left. Conor Bradley ran and slotted in at the far post. I sadly captured this one on film. Our hopes were raised a little, but another VAR check did not help us.

Fackinell.

In the closing embers of a dire half, we conceded a penalty after Badiashile coughed rather too loudly at Jota. Thankfully, Nunez slammed the kick against the outside of the post.

It stayed 0-2.

At the break, three substitutions.

Malo Gusto for Chilwell.

Mykhailo Mudryk for Gallagher.

Christopher Nkunku for Madueke.

Early in the second-half, a decent break from Gusto down the right and the ball was played deep into the box, rather like a bouncing bomb. Mudryk – who had that crazily optimistic debut at Anfield just over a year ago – fluffed his lines and the ball flew way over.

Bollocks.

The mood in the away end was as sombre as I have known it. Spaces began to appear around me. That passionate, rugged, defiant “fuck’em all” support of decades ago was nowhere to be seen.

On sixty-five minutes, as simple as you like, a long ball from deep by Van Dijk to Bradley. He skipped past Badiashile and slung over a cross. In front of the goal, in front of The Kop, Dominik Szoboszlai leapt up and headed down and in. The whereabouts of our central defenders at the time is not known.

Fackinell.

The home fans in the top tier of the “Annie Road” sang.

“Liverpool, Liverpool – Top Of The League.”

Neighbours in my row departed to pubs, trains and automobiles. There were seven empty seats to my left and five empty seats to my right. Earlier in the evening, I had been concerned that after such a long spell of drinking since just after midday that I might well be slumped asleep in my seat by 9.45pm.

Now, I almost wished that I was.

Carney Chukwuemeka replaced Caicedo.

Caicedo and Fernandez had been awful, just awful.

On seventy-two minutes, Chukwuemeka turned and ran at the Liverpool defence. He passed to Nkunku, who slipped past markers with some nifty footwork and slid the ball in. It was a really fine goal.

Liverpool 3 Chelsea 1.

Our spirits were raised slightly.

A few of us lone souls yelled :

“COME ON CHELSEA.”

But this was ridiculous. If we had gained a point from this game, the team would have deserved to have been jailed.

Nunez hit the bar yet again

On seventy-nine minutes, any silly thought about an unwarranted draw was extinguished when Luis Diaz crept in behind a sleeping Badiashile to sweep in a low cross from Nunez.

Late on, a Chelsea debut for Cesare Casadei who replaced Palmer, and – worryingly – this is the first time that I have mentioned his name.

Sigh.

We gathered together outside and decided to wait a while to hunt down a cab. We walked the short distance to “The Arkles” and drowned our sorrows. This was always an odd pub in that it was an away pub but one that allowed home fans in too. To be honest, there never was any trouble in all the years that I have dropped into it at Anfield. We had a couple more pints, and one was bought for us by a Liverpool fan from my neck of the woods. He came from Gloucestershire I seem to remember. Brij and I chatted away to him. He was friendly enough and slowly but surely the agony of the game slowly subsided. Behind me, Steve, PD and Parky chatted to two Liverpool fans from Ireland. I am sure that we were the only Chelsea fans in there. We did not leave “The Arkles” until almost midnight.

We caught another Uber down to the city centre and at last had a bite to eat. At about 12.45am, we slipped into “Pop World” and had a few nightcaps. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

It wasn’t.

We finally took another cab back to the hotel, and we must have hit the sack at about 2am.

It had been a long day.

WHERE D’YER GET YER TRAINEES?

GOIN THE MATCH.

Tales From Platform 11 And Platform 25

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Chris Axon

FC Red Bull Salzburg vs. Chelsea : 25 October 2022.

When we heard the dates for the games in Group E of this season’s Champions League, my first task was focussed on sorting out Milan. I am, after all, used to just attending one away game of this stage in the competition. But after discussion with the Paul and Parky, I then turned my attention to the away match at FC Red Bull Salzburg. It took a while to resolve but I eventually sorted out a trip for us all.

2022 (Milan and Salzburg) would join 2015 (Porto and Haifa) and 2017 (Rome and Baku) as the only years that I would complete two of the three group phase games. I am in awe of those that continually attend all three, and in absolute awe of those who rarely miss any European away games.

Quickly, then, after the home game with Manchester United on the Saturday came a trip out to Austria on the Monday.

I collected my fellow troops late on Monday morning and we headed up to Heathrow where a British Airways flight to Nuremburg in southern Germany would take off at around 3.45pm. There was much traffic in the last section of the trip east and we arrived a little later at Terminal Five than planned, but all was OK. I had hoped for something a little more substantial on the outbound flight than a packet of crisps and a glass of water but “hey ho.” A fortnight after I was looking down on the port of Dover en route to Turin, I was looking down on it again, though from a much higher elevation. We had left a little later than planned but the pilot clipped thirty minutes off the flight time. We touched down at Nuremburg airport at 6.45pm.

We caught a cab to our digs – a really nice apartment in the middle of an industrial estate – and then soon headed for some drinks. We stopped at a little neighbourhood bar en route to a U-Bahn station for the first drink of the trip, and I had to conjure up some German for the first time in ten years. Amazingly, I realised that the very last time that my little tootsies had been on German soil was the day after a certain game in Munich in 2012. Nuremburg city centre was pretty quiet. We had further drinks in three bars and the lagers, of course, went down well.

I was last in this old city in the summer of 1985. I had stopped off on a month-long Inter-Rail trip to primarily visit Zeppelin Field where Hitler held those rallies in the horrific days of the Third Reich. I traipsed all over the southern half of the city on a Sunday afternoon. Eventually I found it all. The Grosse Strasse was still in place, as was the Congress Hall, and the tribune and podium remained. I clambered up on to the very podium where Hitler addressed his followers. It was, I have to admit, a very eerie sensation.

It pains me to report that a Chelsea mate, a Jew, was abused after a recent game by some of our so called supporters.

Words fail me.

I spoke to Paul and Parky about Hitler’s plans to build the biggest stadium of them all, just to the west of the Grosse Strasse – “Deutsches Stadion” – which would have held 400,000 in a huge horse-shoe shape, but this monster was never built. It would have been the biggest stadium ever.

I saw their eyes glaze over before me.

Sadly, my hunt for a German sausage, a crusty bread roll, with some sauerkraut and a dab of mustard did not materialise. We made do with a chicken kebab.

The wurst was still to come.

…more eyes glazing over.

On the Tuesday, the day of the game, we took the U-Bahn into town and caught the 8.12am train south to Munich. It was a quick and easy service and only took an hour or so. I tried to snooze a little. Outside there was mist and fog, with limited visibility.

But I was awake to see a gorgeous image that I think will remain in my memory forever. Looking out to my right, in the middle of a field shrouded in mist, a lone white church tower stood, with sunlight crashing against it.

It took my breath away.

I quickly thought about my two previous games in Austria.

1994/95 : Austria Memphis 1 Chelsea 1 and two words – “John Spencer.”

2016/17 : Rapid Vienna 2 Chelsea 0 and another two words – “shite friendly.”

There was a quick turnaround at Munich’s Hauptbanhof, a place that I remembered not only from post-match meanderings in May 2012, but from my wanderlust years of my youth. My most common trip in those days was Milano Centrale to Munich Hauptbanhof, via a change at beautiful Verona. It afforded me a fine sleep between Verona and Munich. I must have travelled that route ten times or so.

Our onward leg left from Platform 11, right on the southern edge of the main section of the station, which – I have to remark – was not as large as I remembered it. Nothing on the scale of Milan’s beauty anyway.

Platform 11 brought back a funny memory or two from late September 1987.

Ian, Trev and I – three college mates, as featured in the Milan episode – had spent the evening at the city’s famous Oktoberfest. We were blitzed. We had consumed four massive steins apiece. We were walloped. I am not sure how, but I walked away with two “Spatenbrau” steins, the others had one apiece.

Fellow travellers were slumped, snoozing, comatose, all over the station, a scene that was repeated after the 2012 game where Glenn and I tip-toed among Bayern fans on the way to the left-luggage lockers.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, in a beer-induced haze, my two companions first lost their left-luggage keys, but eventually found them. Trev was out of money so decided to catch an overnight train to Paris and head back to the UK early. Ian and I would travel to Hamburg. But I then realised that I had lost my wallet and Inter-Rail card and that Trev must have had them both; he was already asleep and far from impressed when I woke him. It was lucky that I had awoken him to be honest. He was on the wrong train so I quickly hooked him off. By sheer luck, I had rescued him just in time. We all then decided to catch an overnight train to Vienna to get some sleep after the Hamburg train never materialised.

We slept like babies.

When we woke, all was still. Ian and I presumed that we had miraculously arrived in Vienna. Trev, bless him, thought that he was newly arrived in Paris.

I looked outside.

We were still stuck on platform 11 at Munich.

Fackinell.

My only explanation for this is that the Germans, bless them, had put on train compartments for revellers to sleep in overnight during Oktoberfest.

But none of us never found out for sure.

Later that day we headed up to Stuttgart and Dortmund to see a football game that had already taken place.

Drink. What a perilous friend.

Back to 2022, we arrived at Salzburg train station at just before 11am. The last few miles of the jurney had been simply magnificent. The Alps to the South were just splendid. What a joy to travel in support of our team.

Salzburg. I was last here with my then girlfriend Judy, en route to a few days in the Alpine resort of Kaprun in late 2010. I had dropped into Salzburg from Vienna once in the ‘eighties by train, I think I never left the train station, but stayed an afternoon in the city on a day trip with my parents in 1977 from Seefeld in the Austrian Tyrol.

We picked up our match tickets at the quaintly named Fanny von Lenhert Strasse – I heard we had sold all 1,500 – and then quickly nabbed a cab to take us to our digs, a one room apartment a mile outside the city centre. Within an hour of arriving in Salzburg, we were sat at a table in a local restaurant drinking a pint of Stiegl, awaiting the arrival of plates of pork schnitzel with parsley potatoes.

The beers went down well. I remembered the beer from 2010.

The food was gorgeous too.

Fantastic.

We walked into town and soon spotted some friendly faces outside a sun-kissed bar in the square next to the train station. It was about 1pm.

“Corner Am Banhof” was to be our base for around two hours. It was bliss. Although our friends Alan, Gary, Daryl, Nick and Pete were down in the old town, where I had visited with mater and pater forty-five years ago – I remember a castle atop a hill and Mozart’s birthplace and lots of antiquity – we found it hard to move. Leigh and his son Darren invited us over to share a table and their two friends from Norway had brought them a bottle of “Fisk” to consume; a heady drink consisting of eucalyptus, liquorice, menthol and vodka. The bottle was shared.

“It’s like getting pissed on Lysterine.”

A local woman, with a shapeless hat, kept pestering us for cigarettes and money.

Leigh’s son Darren asked me if I knew who she was.

“Badly Drawn Girl.”

Friends of Leigh and Darren from Basingstoke called in, suffering a little from a Stiegl brewery tour on the Monday.

Talk of alcohol, talk of football, talk of alcohol again.

The sun beat down. My face was heating up.

“You love the Limoncello, Leigh.”

“Love it? He bought the T-shirt.”

Leigh, wearing a vivid yellow Stone Island T-shirt, beamed in the autumnal sun.

Many friends drifted in and away. A group of Chelsea supporters were sat across the way. I felt sorry for the lone bartender. She was pulling pints of “Stiegl” at record speed.

It was time to move on. We had heard that some friends were massing at the “Shamrock” in the old town so another cab was hailed. We usually avoid Irish bars, preferring local ones, but the weight of friendship was pulling us. Inside, there were more familiar faces.

Fifteen minutes, we sauntered into the “Shamrock” and yes, faces everywhere.

Cathy and Dog, Josh and Andy from LA, the Gloucester boys, Big Rich, George from Prague, Charlotte, Donna and Paul from Somerset, Skippy from Brisbane, the famous Druce brothers.

The drinks flowed. Smiles and laughter. We stayed around two hours.

Andy led the march to a cab rank and we hopped in. Andy, now a family man, used to be ever present at games at the Chelsea pub in Orange County but can’t attend so many these days.

“I miss the sticky floors.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

It took forever, maybe forty minutes to travel just a few miles. We were dropped off outside the Red Bull Arena to the west of the city centre with about forty-five minutes to go before the game was to begin at 6.45pm. This would be the second Red Bull Arena that I would have visited after the one in Harrison in New Jersey in 2015.

The Red Bull franchise, for the want of a better word, has many enemies in the world of football. Since taking over at Austria Salzburg in 2005, the club changed colours from violet and white to red and white – a sure way to upset existing fans, eh? – and have hoovered up titles ever since; thirteen since 2005.

A breakaway club – SV Austria Salzburg – was soon formed and there are factions within the current sporting landscape of the city.

I was reminded of a conversation that I had in a Viennese bar en route to Bratislava in 1997. I was chatting to an Austria Memphis fan – sponsorship has long been part of this nation’s football scene, this club is now known as Austria Vienna but was temporarily named after a cigarette brand – and he spoke of a pre-season tournament that used to take place between teams in Europe that played in violet, that rarest of football colours. The three teams that I remembered were his own Austria Memphis, Anderlecht and Fiorentina. I suspect that a fourth team was Austria Salzburg.

Reb Bull Salzburg fans hated the way Red Bull Leipzig stole some of their best players since its formation in 2009; seventeen all told. This can’t be how football will be run in future generations, can it? There is no more hated club in Germany than Red Bull Leipzig. The fans of Locomotive Leipzig must loathe the club like no other team.

I guess that Red Bull Salzburg are equally loathed in Austria.

I am sure it wasn’t by design, but we ended up virtually circumnavigating the stadium which was built in 2003. We set off outside the east stand, bumping into fellow Chelsea on the way, before finally ending up outside the away entrance in the south-western corner. A factory was pumping flumes of smoke into the bright blue sky near the stadium, and as we walked underneath the dark stands, walkways above allowed fans, presumably enjoying pre-match festivities in adjacent corporate blocks, to traverse into the seating area. They resembled skywalkers. There was something bleak and futuristic about this, almost dystopian, an odd image that I had to capture on film.

Fritz Lange’s “Metropolis” as a football game? Maybe. He was born in Vienna. Maybe he knew something.

Chelsea played a pre-season game against this team at this stadium in July 2019; a 3-0 win. I am sure nobody I know went.

We were inside with about half-an-hour to go. The Chelsea support was split into two. We were based in the rather dark and dingy lower corner at the southern end. I took many photos of friends as they waited for the game to begin.

I approached Tim, DJ, Neil and Pete.

“Not sure I am ready to do this game on my blog. I am bollocksed.”

The result of around five hours of solid drinking was having an effect.

The three of us spotted space where the Famous Five – Nick the Whip, Pete, Alan, Gary and Daryl – were stood so we joined them. There was rail seating and of course everyone stood. There was netting ahead of us, obscuring the view, with fences to the front and screens to the sides. We are so used to no segregation in the UK that it still comes as a slight shock to see what others in Europe put up with.

Before kick, the dimming of lights, the boom of the PA, then mosaics and a huge “Salzburg” banner at the opposite end.

I had again, as in Milan, opted on my pub camera for this trip. In this dark corner, I was sadly resigned to the fact that my photos wouldn’t be too great for this game.

Chelsea were wearing those poxy navy socks; why? The home team were in a meek and weak grey kit, like something from an Alex Ferguson dystopian nightmare, circa The Dell 1996.

Our team?

Kepa

Chalobah – Silva – Cucarella

Pulisic – Kovacic – Jorginho – Sterling

Gallagher – Aubameyang – Mount

Or something like that.

It was probably easier to surmise the shape upstairs in the other section. Very soon into the game I mentioned to Pete that we were exhibiting the exact same stance, leaning on the metal barrier in front, but with our fingers smothering our faces in fear of a misadventure.

An early chance for Kai Havertz. Reacting well to collect a miss-timed headed back-pass, he stretched but crunched the Salzburg ‘keeper Philipp Kohn who lay on the deck for a while.

Chances at either end were exchanged in the first quarter of an hour and it was an even game. Maybe Pete and I were right to be a little concerned. It had been a lovely trip this far, and although these European forays are never all about the football in itself, the onus was on us to secure a win here and, with it, our passage into the knockout phase in 2023.

The home fans were raucous. But we were in good voice too.

“And it’s Super Chelsea.”

The referee, from Switzerland (um, is that akin to us having a Scottish ref in charge at Chelsea, answers on a postcard…) was wearing a red shirt, black shorts and red socks. This elicited a super bit of trivia from Nick who has been going to Chelsea since the ‘fifties and always, always, has a cupboard full of interesting facts about our wonderful club.

“We wore those colours at Maine Road in 1966, the game when Osgood flicked some V-signs at the City supporters.”

“Love it.”

A Salzburg shot flew over the bar at our end.

A forest of wanker hands to the home areas, thank you very much.

On twenty-three minutes, a move broke down at the other end and the ball fell to Mateo Kovacic. With the quickest of reactions, our Croatian man guided the ball high past the Salzburg ‘keeper from twenty yards out.

What a finish. He gets too few goals, but they are often classy efforts.

Alan, to my right :

“Zey vill have to come at us now.”

Me :

“Come on meine kleine diamonds.”

Chelsea were 1-0 up.

Phew.

“He signed for Chelsea on a transfer ban.”

From a Conor Gallagher corner, a glanced header from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang soon followed, but there was a sublime stretch and save from their ‘keeper. After a magnificent flowing move from south to north, Havertz set up Aubameyangr but our whole section groaned when the chance was spurned.

More chances were exchanged but Chelsea were in the ascendency, often with long passing moves aimed to find spaces in the packed Austrian defence.

A save down low from Kepa.

A save from another Gallagher cross and a meek Havertz header, close in.

Just before the break, our best move of the game thus far, with the impressive Havertz dancing in from the left touchline and the ball ending up with Aubameyang, but yet another fine save by their ‘keeper.

At the break, I had a little wander and began watching the second-half at the back of the section for a different perspective. The area next to the home fans to our right afforded such a poor view.

Soon into the second-half, Salzburg equalised when Junior Adamu latched onto a searching ball from out on their left cut out everybody. It was a fine goal and reignited the home fans.

Two quick chances followed for Aubameyang – another fine save – and Jorginho, a header swiped away on the line.

At the half-way stage of the second-half, Christian Pulisic twisted and turned the ball inside to Havertz, who dragged the ball back.

I shouted “Kai – SHOOT!”

He did.

His left foot conjured up some magic, the ball flying into what the Americans call the “upper 90.”

I hugged Daryl – I was now at the other end of our line – and we celebrated a really fine goal.

“It’s still nice to know that after all the years I have known you, and after witnessing so many Chelsea goals, it still elicits the same response.”

We were now 2-1 up.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek for the excellent Kovacic.

A fine save, now, from Kepa down low. A clearance from Thiago Silva off the line. Phew.

Armando Broja for the frustrating Aubameyang.

A few more chances came and went, with Kepa now the busier of the two ‘keepers.

Two late substitutions.

Hakim Ziyech for Sterling.

Mason Mount for Gallagher.

Thankfully, there were no late scares. With us winning 2-1 and Milan beating Dinamo Zagreb 4-0, our qualification for the next phase, and holiday roulette, was secured. A first-place finish is teasingly close.

Right after the match, we sped outside, over a grass verge and straight onto a waiting bus that took us straight back to the centre of the city. As the bus reached its destination, there was a spontaneous round of applause for the driver. This was just excellent. What great organisation.

Five of us, Team Druce and us Three Chuckle Brothers wandered off into the city. We hoped to get some food, but two places were shut. We caught a cab after a drink in the first restaurant of the day and ended up a few doors down from the “Shamrock” in the old town, or rather right on the very edge of it.

“I saw more of bloody Salzburg in 1977 with my parents.”

More “Steigls”, more laughs. The night continued on. We stayed for two hours. At around 1am, it was time to call it a night. We got a cab back to Ausstrasse and soon fell asleep.

I was awake at around 9am on the Wednesday with not the slightest hint of a hangover. I just love those Austrian and German beers.

We wandered down to the city centre, killed some time with some food, alas no wursts, and caught the train to Munich at midday.

At Munich Hauptbanhof, there was an hour wait. Our pre-printed itinerary said that our return train to Nuremburg would depart at just after 3pm from platform 25, this one on the northern edge of the main station.

At just before 3pm, we saw a train marked up for Nuremburg pull in to platform 22.

We hopped on it.

Easy.

Well, not quite.

After an hour or so, with me trying but failing to nod off, I noticed we were making very slow progress. We were on the wrong train.

This one, instead of arriving at 4.45pm ahead of our 7.50pm flight home, would get in to Nuremburg at 6.16pm.

Bollocks.

We had obviously missed an announcement about our booked train, much faster, leaving from another platform.

From 4pm to 6pm, we sat still and silent, consumed about our plans once we hit Nuremburg. It was the slowest two hours of my life. The train tantalisingly stopped right outside the final destination for ten minutes.

Tick tock, tick tock.

It eventually pulled in at 6.25pm.

I almost expected a German army officer in plain clothes to wish us “good…luck.”

We hurriedly raced out into the evening air and I shouted to the first cab driver.

“Flughafen. Schnell. Schnell. Schnell.”

As I said it, I knew it sounded ridiculous.

Thankfully, the cab only took ten minutes to reach the airport and by 7pm, we were through security and waiting for our – now typically delayed – plane. We were there with an hour to spare.

I heard the theme to “The Great Escape” in my head.

“And relax.”

But still no German sausages. Damn it. Next time.

The flight left a little late, but we were back at Heathrow in good time. We left there at just before 10pm, and I was home just after midnight. It had been the easiest part of the entire trip home.

This had been a lovely trip.

And I have enjoyed writing this one.

Why does its title reference a train station in Germany, though?

Because it’s Munich. I just like talking and writing about Munich.

My friend JD always lists the number of stadia that he has attended seeing Chelsea games outside the UK, and the one in Salzburg was number seventy-six. That’s some number, eh?

While I am in the mood, and everyone knows that I love a list, my current foreign experiences with Chelsea are as follows (and I include games in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland here as these countries are outside of our home league which includes England and Wales) :

Camp Nou, Barcelona, 4.

Stadio Olimpico, Rome 3.

Allianz Stadium, Turin 2.

Dignity Health Sports Park, Carson, California 2.

Estadio Dragao, Porto 2.

FedEx Field, Landover, Maryland 2.

Johann Cruyff Arena, Ajax 2.

Mohamed Bin Zayem Stadium, Abu Dhabi 2.

Nissan Stadium, Yokohama 2.

Olympic Stadium, Baku 2.

Parc Des Princes, Paris 2.

Yankee Stadium, New York 2.

Allianz Arena, Munich 1.

Allianz Stadion, Vienna 1.

Bank Of America Stadium, Charlotte 1.

BayArena, Leverkusen 1.

Benito Villamarin, Seville 1.

Birds Nest Stadium, Beijing 1.

Bukit Jalil Stadium, Kuala Lumpur 1.

Cowboys Stadium, Arlington 1.

Estadio Jose Alvalade, Lisbon, 1.

Giants Stadium, Meadowlands, New Jersey 1.

Groupama Arena, Bucharest 1.

Heinz Field, Pittsburgh 1.

Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow 1.

La Romareda, Zaragoza 1.

Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow 1.

M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore 1.

Mercedes-Benz Arena, Stuttgart 1.

Michigan Stadium, Ann Arbor 1.

Nef Stadium, Istanbul 1.

Olympic Stadium, Kiev 1.

Optus Stadium, Perth 1.

Prater Stadium, Vienna 1.

Rajamangala Stadium, Bangkok 1.

Rasunda Stadium, Stockholm 1.

Red Bull Arena, Harrison, New Jersey 1.

Red Bull Arena, Salzburg 1.

Richmond Park, Dublin 1.

Sammy Ofer Stadium, Haifa 1.

San Siro, Milan 1.

Stade Louis 2, Monaco 1.

Stadion Strelnice, Jablonec 1.

Stadio Olimpico, Turin 1.

Stadio San Paolo, Naples 1.

Stanford Stadium, Palo Alto 1.

Steaua Stadium, Bucharest 1.

Subaru Park, Chester, Pennsylvania 1.

Telhelne Pole, Bratislava 1.

Toyota Park, Chicago 1.

Ullevaal Stadium, Oslo 1.

US Bank Stadium, Minneapolis 1.

Veltins Arena, Gelsenkirchen 1.

Vicente Calderon Stadium, Madrid 1.

Weserstadion, Bremen 1.

Windsor Park, Belfast 1.

Total Stadia : 56

Total Games : 71

UEFA Games : 43

FIFA Games : 4

Friendly Games : 24

Tales From Division Two, Serie B And The Champions League

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Milan : 5 October 2022.

It honestly didn’t seem too long ago that Parky and I had pulled up at a Berkshire pub on the way to a mate’s wedding reception in August. It was here that we were to learn of our fate in this season’s Champions League draw. What with Milan and Inter (never Inter Milan, a moniker that befuddles every Italian; a name that sounds as jarring to them as Everton Liverpool does to us) both partaking in the competition this season, the likelihood of the UEFA Gods allowing me the chance to – at last – see Chelsea at the San Siro was a little stronger than normal. Much to my pleasure we were drawn in the same autumnal group as Milan. My wish had come true. And now here we were; on the cusp of two games against the rossoneri in less than a week.

It also, really, didn’t seem that long ago since our first ever game – if you dismiss the qualifier against the now defunct Skonto Riga – in the Champions League against Milan in September 1999.

But let’s go further back than this.

Our paths first crossed in UEFA’s Inter-Cities Fairs Cup competition in 1965/66. In the first game in Milan on 9 February 1966, Milan defeated Chelsea 2-1 at a game that only attracted 11,000 at the San Siro. This low gate has always surprised me. I found out this week why it was so low; it was played on a Tuesday afternoon due to the threat of fog in the evening. In the return match at Stamford Bridge a week later, over 59,000 – that’s more like it – assembled to witness a game that ended 2-1 too. This match was notable for producing the largest income from the gate that the club had ever experienced. It was also the first game that any British club had produced a programme with colour photographs. In those days, there was no “away goals count double” after a tied aggregate over both games, nor even extra-time after the second one. Instead, a third game play-off was used. Milan “won” the venue on the toss of a coin and so both teams reassembled at the San Siro on 2 March. This game ended 1-1 in front of a more reputable 40,000. The teams still couldn’t be split. In the end, and as ridiculous as it now seems, the passage into the quarter final stage was decided by another coin toss. On this occasion, Ron Harris chose correctly and Chelsea advanced.

On the drive up to London in PD’s car, Parky wondered if Chopper had used a double-headed coin and we all had a little chuckle.

With Chelsea meticulously avoiding European competition entirely from 1971 to 1994, the thoughts of playing games against such an elite club as Milan would have been thought of as mere folly. Way back when we were in the old Second Division in two spells, such encounters were off the radar, another world away.

In 1998/99 we finished third and thus entered the following season’s Champions League. Our match at home to Milan, twenty-three years ago, is remembered with deep affection indeed. Although the match ended as a 0-0 draw, it was the most entertaining goalless game that I can ever remember seeing. But the thing that I recollect most was the heightened sense of occasion that we all experienced on that evening in SW6.

I remember getting to the ground early and waiting by the players’ entrance to see if anyone famous was loitering around. My diary, sadly, notes that the only person that I saw of note was Des Lynham. Alan and I got in early to pin my “VINCI PER NOI” banner on the wall at the back of the Matthew Harding Upper. I watched alongside Alan in the same seats that I would be watching the same two teams in 2022.

That Milan team included such Italian greats as Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta and Demetrio Albertini, plus the imported strikers Andriy Shevchenko, newly-acquired from Dynamo Kiev that summer, and Oliver Bierhoff.

The Milan players that night wore a shirt with thin red and black stripes – how ‘sixties – and this was met with my approval. I wasn’t a fan of the black shorts and socks though.

Milan always wore red and black striped shirts with crisp white shorts and white socks. In my eyes, it was a classic kit, so clean, so fresh. I especially liked the Kappa kit from the Gullit, Rijkaard and Van Basten era with Mediolanum as the sponsor. I am sure we can all remember Gullit, on joining us, saying how much he loved playing in kits with white socks. I was always the same; it always looked good. Maybe it was my Chelsea bias.

What Milan were doing in black shorts and socks that season is the stuff of nightmares. However, they were not the only giants playing silly buggers at that time.

I loved the kits of the top three Italian teams in the ‘eighties and further back.

Milan : red and white striped shirts, white sorts, white socks.

Inter : blue and black striped shirts, black shorts, black socks.

Juventus : black and white striped shirts, baggy white shorts, white socks.

I had seen Juve versus Fiorentina in Turin in the May of 1999 and the sight of them playing with black shorts and black socks just did not seem right; in fact, it looked atrocious.

Ah, that match in 1999 was wonderful. Our team was jam packed with crowd favourites such as Dennis Wise, Gus Poyet, Gianfranco Zola, Marcel Desailly, Dan Petrescu and we paraded new signing Didier Deschamps. My diary from 1999 notes that Zola, the little maestro, hit a post and Bierhoff a bar – “similar to Peacock, ’94 Cup Final – and that it was “a superb night of football.”

The return leg, in late October 1999, is of course the stuff of legend, and inspired one of the most well-loved chants of the modern era. I am still gutted – traumatised – that I wasn’t there to witness it. I was on the wrong shift at work and unable to switch.

I hoped that my time would come again. Seeing Chelsea at the Giuseppe Meazza is right up there.

There had been, incidentally, a mid-season friendly at the San Siro in February 1997 – a 2-0 Milan win – that a few die-hards attended.

Since those days, the two clubs have met but only in a raft of pre-season matches in the United States. Milan are, surely, Chelsea’s most frequent opponent in such tours.

The seven games are listed here.

2 August 2004 : Chelsea 2 Milan 3 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

24 July 2005 : Chelsea 1 Milan 0 – Foxborough, Massachusetts.

31 July 2005 : Chelsea 1 Milan 1 – East Rutherford, New Jersey.

24 July 2009 : Chelsea 2 Milan 1 – Baltimore, Maryland.

28 July 2012 : Chelsea 0 Milan 1 – Miami, Florida.

4 August 2013 : Chelsea 2 Milan 0 – East Rutherford, New Jersey.

4 August 2016 : Chelsea 3 Milan 1 – Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I was lucky enough to attend three of these.

The game in 2005 at Giants Stadium wasn’t particularly enthralling, but I was able to witness Didier Drogba’s goal at close hand. The main Chelsea supporter section was up the other end. Milan then equalised. I must admit it felt special to be touring the US with the reigning English Champions. This was a fine weekend for me. New York Yankees on the Saturday, Chelsea on the Sunday. Perfect.

The match in 2009 at the Baltimore Ravens’ NFL stadium was probably the best quality match of the seventeen that I have seen in the US. Unfortunately, I was still waiting outside for a friend to arrive at the start and thus missed Drogba’s fine opening goal. A Yuri Zhirkov goal gave us a 2-1 win after Milan equalised. For many, Baltimore was a high water mark of our many US “summer seasons.”

The encounter in 2016 was the first sporting event to take place at the state-of-the-art Minnesota Vikings NFL stadium. This was another decent game. Bertrand Traore scored for us but Milan equalised. However, two late goals from Oscar gave us a fine 3-1 win in a game that marked N’Golo Kante’s first outing in Chelsea colours.

Back to 2022.

We were parked up as early as 4.20pm. It was time for another act in the Chelsea and Milan story.

There was a fair bit of time to kill. I had a wander. I chatted to the usual suspects at Steve’s programme stall and Marco’s “CFCUK” stall. I didn’t mind admitting that I was a little fearful going into the evening’s game. We had amassed just one point out of six and now faced the two hardest games of the group in quick succession.

“Deep down, we need four points from the Milan games but this will be a tough, tough ask.”

I popped in for a pie and chips on Fulham Broadway, then met a few more of the even-more-usual suspects at “Simmons” which was quiet when I walked in at 6pm. It grew busier but not with the football set. Instead, there were young Londoners on a night out. I bumped into a chap from Louisiana, quite by chance, who had been at the Palace game on Saturday.

The music blared. I supped a couple of pints. In the back of my head I was still fearful of getting turned over.

We all set off in good time to reach our seats by about 7.30pm.

The ground slowly filled. There didn’t seem to be anything like the sense of occasion that had accompanied the game in 1999. However, the “half-and-half” scarf grafters on the Fulham Road had evidently done quite a trade. I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many scarves. Most, it saddened me to see, were folded with the red of Milan visible. I presumed that there would be around 3,000 from Lombardy in the designated away section, but knew that there would be other Milan fans dotted around.

The team was announced.

Kepa

Kouilbaly – Silva – Fofana

James – Kovacic – Loftus-Cheek – Chilwell

Mount – Aubameyang – Sterling

It looked a decent set-up.

The Milan team of course included former Chelsea players Olivier Giroud and Fikayo Tomori, plus their big hope Rafael Leao.

The Milanese – a good many had been plotted up at Earl’s Court – were now beginning to make some noise. Their flags were out. The boys of the Curva Sud were ensconced in the southern end at Stamford Bridge, though the twin tiers of The Shed must have felt miniscule compared to the towering tiers at the San Siro.

A certain song was heard before the kick-off…

…”in the San Siro, with ten minutes to go.”

I remember watching the highlight’s on a mate’s TV in a portakabin – the traffic office – where I worked at a warehouse in Trowbridge, not knowing the result, but celebrating wildly when Wisey scored. The portakabin was rocking that night in deepest Wiltshire.

The teams arrived on the pitch. I still miss that walk to the West Stand across the pitch; that added drama.

The players soon lined up.

The anthem.

The players broke but were then called in so the pour souls who lost their lives in Indonesia recently could be remembered in silence. Again, Kepa had to race from his goal mouth to make the start. The minute’s silence was meant to commence with the referee’s whistle, but there wasn’t one. By now, the crowd were stood in complete silence. After a good few seconds the referee’s whistle blew. With that, the home fans began singing “Chelsea” while the players looked befuddled. I didn’t know what was going on. It was the most poorly executed silence I had ever seen.

Milan were in white shirts with a slight red trim, white shorts and black socks. At least they were in their club colours. Seeing Milan in bright orange, dayglow green or a jarring yellow just would not have seemed right.

Milan had the best of the opening five minutes with a couple of free kicks being swung in from their left. I immediately liked the look of Leao. We coped well with defending these and then built our presence as the game developed.

On just five minutes, a super move. Silva to Aubameyang to Mount, and a fine save from distance by the Milan ‘keeper Ciprian Tatarusanu.

The Milanisti were in fine voice.

“Forza Meelan ale ale, Foraza Meelan ale ale, Forza Meelan ale ale, ale ale ale.”

There was a magnificently-timed slide by Silva to rob a Milan attacker on the half-way line. I wish we had seen him earlier in his career. I had seen him in Baltimore in 2009 playing for Milan; if only we had picked him up at that time.

The defender then rose well at a Chelsea free-kick from Mount on our right to force a fine save by the Milan goalkeeper. Soon after, his diving header at goal from a corner on our left caused all sorts of panic and mayhem in the Shed End goalmouth. Milan never seemed to be in a position to clear the ball and, to this observer at least, a goal seemed on the cards. There were a few stabs at the ball, but after a some swipes, a Chelsea leg – and boot – tucked it home.

GET IN.

Chelsea 1 Milan 0.

The Stamford Bridge crowd roared.

Wesley Fofana had pushed it home.

Huge celebrations.

That anticipation of the goal was magical. I just knew we’d eventually put it away.

Alan : “like a goal in weekly parts.”

Chris : “love that mate, that’s going in the blog.”

Alan : “be even better if it had been scored by a player called Marshall Cavandish.”

Bloody hell, despite my pre-match fears we were 1-0 up. We really grew in confidence and dominated the rest of the half. On the half-hour, I wondered if Giroud had even touched the ball. A shot from Mount was deflected wide. There was a fine move and an even finer lob from Mount but the goal was disallowed for offside. Sadly, Fofana was injured and fell to the floor twice. On the second occasion, he did not recover and was replaced by Trevoh Chalobah on thirty-eight minutes.

I was very happy with all this. We were absolutely dominating play and the away team had not carved out a single effort on goal. With a few minutes remaining in the half, Leao produced a powerful run between two defenders down below but was beautifully shepherded out by Chalobah.

There was a strong run from Sterling but it came to an anaemic ending as a block halted his shot. We all wondered why he hadn’t shot earlier. Then, just before the break, the best attack of the half from the away team. There was another strong run from Leao but the resulting shot from Charles de Ketalataere was blocked and the rebound was slashed over by Rade Krunic.

All was well at the break, then. There were happy faces all around.

Apart from, well it pains me to say it, the atmosphere was pretty poor. I am not sure if this was because many of the usual match-goers had decided to give it a miss. The tickets were only £35. Maybe the mix of spectators had caused it. I always note a far more cosmopolitan crowd – dare I say the word “tourists”? – at European games. The only section of the crowd that was bothering were the Milan fans in the far corner.

Sigh.

Modern football, eh?

The second-half began. By now I was chatting away to a young Chelsea fan from Kent – hello Jack, hope you like the blog – and he seemed to be pretty knowledgeable about modern tactics and the strengths of our players. But then it made me a bit misty-eyed for the days when our collective understanding of tactics – no “high press”, no “low block”, no “between the lines” in 1999 – was not that great but we just used to sing our hearts out and get behind the team.

Another sigh.

There was a very optimistic overhead kick from near the edge of the box from Trevoh Chalobah that didn’t bother anyone. I was reminded of a chant that my mate Tommy from LA invented for Trevoh’s brother Nathaniel at the Milan game in Minneapolis in 2016.

To the tune of “she fell over!“ :

“He’s Chalobah!”

It has potential, eh?

We were dominating everything about this game. On fifty-six minutes, Ben Chilwell was in acres of space but his cross was too long, laughably so. Not to worry, the loose ball was collected by Reece James who sent over an inch-perfect cross into the six-yard box. Tomori tangled his limbs and Aubameyang struck from close in.

GET IN.

Chelsea 2 Milan 0.

There was a summersault from the scorer that was just too quick for me. He loved that goal and so did we. At last a poacher. Hallelujah.

I turned to Jack :

“It was if Chilwell thought to himself” –

“Well I can’t cross a ball but let’s give it to a bloke who can.”

Not long after, a slide-rule pass from the excellent Sterling found Reece on the overlap. There was a touch to move the ball onto his right peg. At this stage, I again knew a goal was coming. I love those moments.

BOSH.

Chelsea 3 Milan 0.

What noise now.

“Reece James. He’s one of our own.”

Stamford Bridge was temporarily on fire.

Phew.

The rest of the game? Not sure. I think I was just too surprised to take it all in.

I turned to Jack : “I suppose in some ways we will honestly feel a bit cheated if we don’t score another one.”

Some substitutions followed.

Jorginho for Kovacic.

Gallagher for Aubameyang.

Havertz for Mount.

Broja for Sterling.

All was good in the world. Well, apart from the noise which soon reached its old levels after the burst of energy and commotion that followed the second and third goals.

Only sing when we are winning?

Yep.

Even in the last seconds, the Milan lot were still singing, still bouncing up and down, still putting on a show.

At the completion of the game, the PA played “One Step Beyond” and even that was met with a muted reaction.

What a comparison

1999 : no goals but surely a bristling atmosphere.

2022 : three goals yet a muted atmosphere.

Another sigh.

To complete this Chelsea and Milan history lesson, let’s look at 1982/83 once again.

On Saturday 2 October 1982, Chelsea beat Grimsby Town 5-2 at Stamford Bridge. This game was watched by another 10,000 crowd and the scorers were David Speedie with another two goals and also Micky Droy, John Bumstead and Mike Fillery. We were unbeaten at home with two wins and two draws.

On Sunday 3 October, Milan played an away game at Campobasso, not so far from Naples. The surprising thing here is that this match took place in Serie B after the once mighty Milan team, European Cup winners in 1963 and 1969, had been relegated for the second time in three seasons in 1981/82. They won 2-0 and the only “stranieri” – foreigner – in the squad (Italian teams were allowed only one, how times change) was Joe Jordan, who nabbed one of the goals. Milan’s 1982/83 season ended more gloriously than ours. They were promoted as champions and have not been relegated since.

Grimsby, Campobasso.

Fackinell.

We made our way back to the car and PD made good time on the return to our little part of the Chelsea Kingdom. I reached home at around 1.30am.

See you on Saturday against Wolves.

1999.

2005.

2009.

2016.

2022.

Tales From A Love Story

Posted on August 19, 2021 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Crystal Palace : 14 August 2021.

I don’t think it is too far-fetched to say that there have been few games – few occasions, few spectacles – in the history of Stamford Bridge that have matched our game against Crystal Palace on Saturday 14 August 2021. Sure, the first league games back at the old ground after the Great War and the Second World War must have been emotional affairs. And let’s not forget the gate of more than 100,000 against Moscow Dynamo in 1945 that unofficially signalled the start of a return to football in peaceful times. But this one was different. Everton at home in the early spring of 2020 seemed so distant and never in the history of English football has there ever been such a period of uncertainty and sadness.

Coming not long after my operation in October of last year, the twin games against Leeds United and Krasnodar were out of the question for me in my high-risk state. And I wasn’t really tempted by the home game against Leicester City in May either; I know that many were, and those that went thoroughly enjoyed it. But I wanted my first game back at HQ to be alongside all of my mates, all of my pals, and in a full house. Back with a vengeance, back to normality, back to life.

I returned from Belfast late on the Thursday and battled fatigue in my one day at work – Friday the thirteenth seemed wholly appropriate – but when I woke on Saturday morning, Belfast was still dominating my every thought. It felt as though it hadn’t worked its way out of my system just yet. Belfast was Chelsea game number 1,300 for me and I secretly wished that game number 1,301 wasn’t until the Sunday.

But beggars can’t be choosers, and a Saturday game it was.

I awoke at 6am, ahead of the alarm.

My first task of the new league season was to fill up the fuel tank of my car in a nearby village. As I walked into the shop to pay, I easily spotted a woman who I went to school with as a child. She was – if I am not mistaken – the first girl to ever give me a kiss, possibly when I was around seven years of age, and – again if my memory serves me correctly – this momentous occasion took place on the village recreation ground, in the long grass, no more than a quarter of a mile from where I am typing these notes. I see her around occasionally. I am sure she has forgotten all about me and I can’t say I blame her. The petrol station was, ironically, in the village of my first-ever girlfriend – summer 1982, aged seventeen – and as I set off on the trip to London I smirked about these romantic incursions into the day of me reacquainting myself with the love of my life.

I collected P-Diddy at 7.30am and I collected L-Parky at 8am.

Up the A303, into London, parked up near Queen’s Club at 10.15am.

Bosh.

For those regular readers, my pre-match routine for the opening league game of 2021/22 followed a familiar pattern. We started at “The Eight Bells” at the bottom end of the Fulham Road – Dave from Northamptonshire and Deano from Lancashire soon joined us – before we all decamped to “Simmon’s” at the bottom of the North End Road to join forces with Alan, Gary, Daryl, Ed, Andy and Sophie.

It was the first time that I had seen Alan since that Everton game nigh-on eighteen months ago. I sat alongside him and it felt so good.

On the walk to the second of the two pubs, I had briefly called by the CFCUK stall to say a few words to Marco. On that fateful day in October – with me in the emergency ward at a hospital in Bath – it was Marco, himself having recently suffered heart problems, that kept me going with a series of text messages. We shook each other’s hands and wished each other well. It was super to see him.

I am not going to comment every week on the clown’s clothing that Chelsea Football Club has decided to dress players in this season, but on the walk to the ground it did dawn on me that the 2020/21 shirt – the one that we wore in Porto – was hardly a Chelsea royal blue at all. It just seemed darker than it should be and rather muted with no vibrancy. It never really dawned on me before. I hardly saw anyone wearing this shirt in my home area this past season, and I don’t think I really noticed it in Porto, but it really jarred when I saw it on this particular day.

Maybe next year, we’ll get a clean and crisp royal blue shirt.

Don’t hold your breath.

As far as I could see, nothing had changed too much along the walk to Stamford Bridge, and I noticed that most fans were not wearing face-coverings outside the stadium. My bag was checked, I bumped into a few friends, my COVID19 passport was inspected outside the Matthew Harding and I joined that oh-so familiar queue before using a new style ticket-scanning machine and then…pause for effect…through the turnstiles…click, click, click…and I was in.

I ascended the six flights of stairs to the MHU, keeping to the left – my superstition – as always.

Inside the stand. I was home.

Phew.

Greeting me was Clive, who has taken Glenn’s season ticket.

Glenn finally decided to give it up after twenty-four seasons. But Glenn hasn’t given up completely; he will still go to a game every month or so, depending upon his working patterns and availability of tickets. I have known Clive since around 2003, so he is a familiar face. I last saw him at a New Order gig in Bristol in July 2019.

With the new rail seating in The Shed, everything looked bluer.

I spent a few minutes or more chatting to various folk in The Sleepy Hollow who I had obviously missed the previous year and a half. Albert, who sits directly in front of me, shared an opinion which had great resonance with me. He too has been a ST holder since 1997.

“This football club has been a massive part of my life. But last season, I didn’t really care. Sometimes I’d be watching us play on TV and I would switch channels at half-time but instead of watching our game again, I’d continue to watch the new programme.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

I knew of many season ticket holders who hardly watched us on TV.

It just wasn’t the same.

The teams were announced.

No Romelu Lukaku. Not yet.

Mendy

Chalobah – Christensen – Rudiger

Dave – Jorginho – Kovacic – Alonso

Mount – Werner – Pulisic

“Park Life” sounded on the PA. There were no crowd-surfing banners due to COVID19. The players, Chelsea in blue, Crystal Palace in Villareal yellow, entered the pitch but instead of walking over to the West Stand – a Chelsea trademark that I have grown to love – they stood on this occasion in front of the East Stand.

And then the two teams linked arms and stood on the centre circle. We were asked to silently remember those who had lost their lives during the global pandemic. On the TV screen around twenty-five names were listed, in groups of four, of Chelsea supporters who had passed away. At the end, a fleeting phrase flickered onto the screen and then faded as quickly as it had appeared.

BLUES FOREVER

One of the Chelsea supporters was Scott La Pointe. I first met Scott in Charlotte in North Carolina in 2015 when, along with his wife and two children, they joined in with some lovely pre and post-match socialising around the game with PSG. His young son Alex memorably entertained the troops with his endearing version of “Zigger Zagger”. It was clear that Scott was a family man who dearly loved both his family and Chelsea. I met up with them all, and many other from the Detroit supporters group of which Scott was a proud member, at Ann Arbor in Michigan the following summer. The game against Real Madrid – to this day the largest official crowd at any Chelsea game anywhere – must have been so special for Scott’s family. It was like a home game for them all. Sadly, not so long after this game, Scott was diagnosed with ALS / Motor Neurone Disease. Scott battled the disease with great strength and great dignity. This was painful for me since one of my Godparents, my uncle Gerald, died from the same disease in around 1988. Scott held out for Christmas 2020 and – amazingly – for the 2021 European Cup Final in Porto too. He watched from his bed in his house in the Detroit suburbs. I often messaged him on Facebook. His last message to me was on the day after the final.

“I really didn’t think I would be here to see yesterday’s match. I can’t tell you how excited I was for them to win. I love your pictures that you posted. Every time the camera went to the crowd, Jamie and I were looking for you. Cheers my friend!”

Scott sadly passed away not long after his forty-third birthday.

He will live on in the memory of all those who knew him.

He was loved by all.

Scott La Pointe : 6 June 1978 to 22 June 2021.

There were a few empty seats dotted about, but not many. The immediate build-up to the game against Patrick Viera’s Crystal Palace was somewhat overshadowed by the very late announcement that some season ticket-holders would not be able to watch from their usual seat in the MHL due to delays in the rail seating. The club must have known there was going to be a risk of this when they sold all other available seats. Surely they should have kept some to one side just in case.

Insert a comment about Chelsea being a well-run football club here :

Before the game began, we heard that Manchester United had walloped Leeds 5-1 at Old Trafford. My mind immediately raced back to forty years ago, opening day 1981, when Leeds lost 5-1 at newly promoted Swansea City, a result that was wildly celebrated at Stamford Bridge as I saw us beat Bolton 2-0. It was the first game that I had ever travelled to independently.

Forty bloody years ago.

Altogether now everybody : “Fackinell.”

Kudos, by the way, to our benign neighbours Brentford on their fine – very fine – 2-0 win against Arsenal the previous night. Fantastic stuff.

We began positively and absolutely dominated possession. Having not seen Palace play for much of the past eighteen months – I found myself not even bothering with “MOTD” in the latter part of last season – I hardly recognised anyone in the Palace team, which was well changed anyway from the last time I had clapped eyes on them. Former Chelsea prospect Mark Guehi took up a position in their defence. I had seen both of his appearances in our colours in the League Cup of 2019/20.

The crowd was in a boisterous and jubilant mood. The time for venom and heated passion will come against more hated rivals.

There was intelligent use of space and we always seemed to have a spare man to stretch the Palace defence. Chances for Dave and Christian Pulisic hinted at a game of goals. There was a further chance from Mateo Kovacic.

There was a succession of corners from our left with Mason Mount pumping the ball in but with mixed results.

Just as we found an attack being thwarted by a foul on Mount just outside the box, I overheard Alan and Clive in a general discussion about a few players. I memorably heard Al say “Alonso worries me” and I silently smiled as I saw the Spaniard place the ball in readiness for a shot on goal.

“Bloody hell Al, that’s tempting fate. This is Alonso territory.”

With that, I snapped as the ball was whipped up and over the wall, curving perfectly away from Vicente Guaita. I saw the spinning ball, through my lens, nestling in the goal. The ‘keeper did not bother moving.

I jumped to my feet – GET IN – and smiled at Alan.

One-nil to the European Champions.

“THTCAUN.”

“COMLD.”

The noise levels then hit stratospheric levels.

On my feet – “Champions Of Europe. We Know What We Are.”

We were back.

And this was perfect Chelsea weather. Memories of opening day wins in recent years against too many teams to mention.

We seemed to be missing an aerial threat in the Palace box, but no doubt the returning Lukaku would remedy that ailment.

A free-kick from Mason hit the wall, but we extended our lead just before the break. A fine move, with Dave setting up Mount with a fine return pass, which lead to the ball being sent low into the box. The ‘keeper got something on the cross but the ball fell to Pulisic, who twisted his body to prod the ball home.

Two-nil to the European Champions.

A late chance for Timo Werner hit the side-netting and we went into the break well on top. In fact, up to the point of our second goal, I could only remember one very rare Crystal Palace attack that soon fizzled out down below me in the area of the pitch that I will forever call Hazardous.

Never could I remember such a dominant first-half performance or rather such a poor opponent (edit : the first-half against Everton in 2016 was exceptional, but Everton were not so woeful as Palace, surely?)

In the back of my mind I was hoping for at least two more goals – maybe more – in the second-half. A trademark volley from Alonso went close.

I noted that – strangely – the song of the night in Belfast, the Belinda Carlisle ditty, was noticeable by its absence in the Stamford Bridge sun. Its time will come again I am sure.

A very rare attack was easily stubbed out by the Chelsea defence. They really were poor. I loved the way that the midfield pairing of Jorginho and Kovacic kept things ticking over in the middle of the park. Werner was in his usual “one step forward, two steps back” mode, looking great one minute and then mediocre the next. Pulisic twisted and turned. He needs a run of games, but I have a feeling that Tuchel is going to rotate a few players behind Lukaku this season. It will be interesting to see how Havertz develops. I really have my eye on him.

Just before the hour, the ball was played to Trevoh Chalobah. He had space to run into, and maybe buoyed by the home crowd chanting “shoooot”, he let fly with a sweet and low rocket. I managed to capture this goal too. The shot was aimed to perfection, just clipping the base of the far post before nestling inside the net.

3-0.

Magnificent.

I also caught the players hugging the excited youngster.

Joyous scenes, eh?

I remember my mate Tom, in his home city of Minneapolis for the Milan game in 2016, coming up with the “He’s Chalobah!” (as in “He fell over!”) chant for Trevoh’s brother Nathaniel.

Let’s get it going again.

I was hoping for more goals but the manager – still without a song, in truth we hardly know him – made some substitutions.

James for Dave.

Havertz for Pulisic.

Emerson for Alonso.

A rare Palace attack on goal – the only one? – from the old warhorse Christian Benteke was easily saved by our man Mendy.

The game ended 3-0.

It was a fine performance, hardly any negatives, but it was only Palace.

I’d score myself 7/10; not as overblown with emotion as others, but I did join in with a fair few songs. I think the football came second to seeing everyone again on this particular day. I am sure that football is still trying to win its way back into my heart if I am honest. But I am equally sure that this will improve with each game and I am bloody sure that I will soon be back to my March 2020 groove before long.

I just need a couple of tough away games to sort myself out and to get myself focused.

What’s that I hear you say?

Arsenal away and then Liverpool away?

OK. Let’s go. Mow those fucking meadows.

The Sleepy Hollow : Season 2021/22 – Chris, Alan, Clive, PD & Gary.

Tales From The Minerva

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Chris Axon

Hull City vs. Chelsea : 25 January 2020.

The third game in eight days was another away day in the North of England. After gliding past Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup, we were drawn against Hull City who are enjoying – or not – a middling season in The Championship.

On my four previous visits to Kingston upon Hull, I had driven up and back from each and every one of them on the day of the game. But it’s a tough, tough ask. It’s around a ten-hour return trip by car. For this game we decided to stay the Saturday night. As the weekend quickly approached, the trip took over my thoughts. There was plenty to keep me pleasantly occupied.

I needed to plan a pub crawl, probably based around the marina. On my last visit to Hull during the 2016/17 season – the match report was titled “Tales From A Day Of Sobriety” – I had left Parky and PD in a large “Spoons” in the city centre, while I pottered off on a little walk around the city centre and the marina. I spotted a few pubs and I made a mental note of their whereabouts. I hoped for a larger, more expansive, tour this time around. There would be no sobriety on this visit.

I was also looking forward – with a kind of schoolboy giddiness – to seeing us in our beautiful blue and yellow FA kit once again.

And there was the matter of the hotel that I had booked. I had sorted out some digs close to City’s KCOM Stadium for the princely sum of £29 for two rooms. I was intrigued, for the want of a better word, how that would pan out.

The game? That would take care of itself.

Let’s go to Hull.

My alarm was set for 4.30am on Saturday morning and I woke a few minutes ahead of it. After a strong coffee, I was ready. This was going to be another long day, but it would be a day that we live for. I fuelled up nearby and collected the father-and-son combination of P-Diddy Daddy-O and Scott at 6am.

Everything was dark until we stopped at Strensham Services on the M5 for a McBreakfast at 7.30am. From then on, the day slowly broke. I made excellent time and the morning flew past. I rarely drive up the M1 for football and I was enjoying the change of scene. After passing East Midlands Airport on the A42, I spotted the familiar cooling towers to the east at Ratcliffe on Soar as I joined the M1 and these signalled, to me anyway, that my journey to “The North” was in full flow. There would be cooling towers-a-plenty on the road to Hull.

Unlike the M6 to the west of the midlands which is predominantly flat, the M1 undulates as it takes everyone north. It’s not a photogenic road. For miles upon mile, the motorway is flanked by huge distribution warehouses, retail parks, the flattened hills of former coal-mining areas, and cooling towers. Past Mansfield, past Chesterfield. Signposts for the footballing cities of Sheffield and Leeds.

There were bittersweet memories of my second and third visits to see Chelsea play at Hull City.

In January 2014 – my match report was titled “Tales From A Road Less Travelled” – I collected friends Andy, Alan and Seb in the midlands en route – and headed up to Hull. The game resulted in a standard 2-0 win for Chelsea, but marks the last game that I attended before my mother became incapacitated through rheumatism. By the time of the next visit in March 2015, barely a year later, my mother had sadly passed away and it was my first away game since her death. On that visit, a 3-2 win on our way to a title, I felt rather numbed by everything. I called that one “Tales From The Beautiful North” and it summed up my melancholy mood. It was a delicate, tender blue day. Memories, no doubt, raced back to the half-term holiday of October 1973 when I first visited Hull with my parents, a day trip from visiting friends in Grimsby, a ferry over the Humber from New Holland, the huge bridge far from completed.

Bridges and elevated sections took us over the rivers which would eventually drift into The Humber. We veered off onto the M18. As we hit the M62, my eyes focussed on the far horizon in several directions. A bleak vista was dominated by cooling towers and wind turbines. It all started to resemble a bleak scene from a sci-fi film.

The winds howl over these flat lands.

Another bridge took us over the wonderfully named River Ouse. Out and away, Hull was not too far now. I drove on past the huge Humber Bridge, the World’s longest until 1998, and I was soon on Clive Sullivan Way, named after a rugby league icon.

In the pub on Tuesday, my pal Tim from Bristol spoke of his last visit to Hull in 2016. If anyone remembers, it was our first game of the long unbeaten run, win after win after win. But on that day, just as he reached the city’s inner suburbs, he spotted a rag and bone man, with cart and horse, like a latter day “Steptoe & Son.” He then spotted a bare-chested man riding a horse through the streets.

Bloody hell, a real city on the edge.

As I drove through the surprisingly wide streets of Hull, I found myself behind a van carrying scrap. I half expected Dublin-style horses to gallop past.

Welcome to Hull.

At around 10.30am we had reached base camp, our hotel on Anlaby Road.

Well. What can I say? It was a pub, with rooms, but hardly worthy of a single star, not so much a hotel as a notel. I soon posted my thoughts on “Facebook.”

“Well, our £7.50 a night hotel has lived down to expectations.”

Much banter followed.

We booked in, and at 11am the barman poured the first pints of the day for us. Friends much further south were yet to set off. You can’t say that we aren’t keen.

There was a little chat with a couple of locals. The pub had openened at 10am, one silent chap was already on his second or third pint. Another grisly local warned us –

“There was some fighting in town last night, Chelsea.”

But we ignored him.

I fiddled with my camera bag, making sure my match ticket was secure.

He looked over and said :

“Ha, is that your first-aid kit?”

Now that made me laugh. All part of the spice of life, eh? Indeed, the place was starting to grow on me.

Like a fungus.

Outside, I took a photo of PD and Scott in front of a chalkboard of the week’s coming attractions, blank apart from karaoke on Sunday. I was just surprised that karaoke was spelled correctly.

At about 11.45am we caught a cab into town.

The cab driver was gruff.

“I fucking hate Chelsea.”

I feared that he might be a Leeds United fan. But no, far from it. In spite of a northern accent, he was from Fulham, a Fulham fan, but living in Hull for forty years. I felt that life had dealt him a tough hand of cards. From the cosmopolitan bustling city of London to the dustbowl of Kingston upon Hull, until recently one of the UK’s forgotten cities.

“I go and watch City a bit. It’s sold out today, isn’t it? Only £12.”

I was warming to him now, it’s funny how football can break down barriers.

We dropped into the second of the day’s seven pubs. It was a familiar haunt. We had visited “The Admiral Of The Humber” in 2015 and 2016. PD was hoping to spot a local that he had chatted to on both occasions. In 2016, there was a funny anecdote.

The Hull City fan had spoken about a visit of Newcastle United, when the very same pub was mobbed by visiting Geordies. They very soon started singing a song, aimed at him, based on the fact that his grey beard and glasses made him resemble an infamous person in Britain’s recent past.

“One Harold Shipman, there’s only one Harold Shipman.”

He smiled as he re-told the story of how he remonstrated with them, and how this resulted in the Geordies buying him drink after drink.

“I love that about football, the banter” he joked.

Alas, no Harold Shipman this time. A couple of Chelsea supporters dropped in, but it was mainly “locals only.” It was a lovely Saturday afternoon mixture of football lads in designer gear, scarfers, a chap in a Dukla Prague away kit, and a table full of overly-made up middle-aged women that do lunch, dinner, tea, an evening meal and breakfast if you ask them nicely.

The three of us were now getting stuck into our second and third pints and the laughter was booming. We chatted about our hotel.

Chris : “I was a bit concerned when all the windows in your room were wide open. I wondered if it meant that the room needed some fresh air. That it would have been otherwise musty.”

PD : “That was to let the rats out.”

Chris : “No, that was to let them in.”

On a wall inside the pub, getting busier and busier now, was a copy of The Housemartins’ “Hull 0 London 4” album.

As the jokes continued, PD and Scott were grinning themselves to death.

At 1pm, we hopped into another cab to embark on the next stage of the pub crawl.

“The Minerva” was to be the highlight of the day and we stayed a good hour. On rather a different scale, it reminded me of The Flatiron Building in New York; a squeezed building, triangular in shape, it sat right on the quayside looking across the river to Lincolnshire. As soon as we arrived, three fellow Chelsea supporters arrived too, faces familiar, names unknown. The pub was a joy. Little rooms, a couple of snugs, a good selection of ales and lagers, antique décor, and it looked like it served excellent food too. The further you went away from the tip of the building, more rooms kept appearing. On a wall was a framed copy of one of Spencer Tunick’s “Sea of Hull” photo shoots which kick-started Hull’s year as the UK’s “City of Culture” in 2017.

I just thought everybody was blue with the cold in Hull.

I could have stayed in “The Minerva” for hours. But I wanted to pack as much in as possible. We still had a few more to visit; “The Barrow Boys”, “The Humber Dock”, “Bar 82” and lastly a real ale pub called “Furley” where I bumped into Kev who sits around ten feet away from me in “The Sleepy Hollow.”

Phew. Seven stops on this pub crawl. It was just right. Perfect even. Friendly locals, no trouble, what it is all about. The pubs and bars on the cobbled streets near the marina were excellent.

“Hull on Earth?”

No.

Or, as the locals would have pronounced it : “nurrrr.”

I like Kingston upon Hull. There, I said it.

Time was moving on now, so we hopped in to a cab, which took us back along the same Anlaby Road that our hotel was on, from the city centre, past The Admiral Of The Humber, and it deposited us a few hundred yards to the south of the KCOM Stadium. Night was falling, and there was a rush to get inside for kick-off.

Surely this was football to a tee. I had awoken at 4.30am and yet thirteen hours later I was rushing to get in on time.

But get in on time I did.

Just in time.

Have I mentioned that I work in logistics?

The stadium was packed, a full-house. I half expected to see swathes of empty seats in our end, with tickets purchased – just £12 remember – for loyalty points alone. A great show of support, four thousand strong.

Frank Lampard chose this starting eleven :

Caballero

Azpilicueta – Tomori – Zouma – Alonso

Barkley – Kovacic – Mount

Hudson-Odoi – Batshuayi – Pedro

I like Hull City’s stadium. I like the rising roof, and the blue lighting of the metal at the rear of the lower deck. For the first time since my first visit I was positioned towards the main stand. On that day in 2008, I celebrated my seven-hundredth Chelsea game with a pre-match “Nando’s” – still my only ever visit – and I detailed the day in “Tales From The Roman Road”. On that Wednesday, I travelled along two roman roads to Hull, the Fosse Way and then Ermine Street. It was fortuitous that I did as many Chelsea missed the kick-off due to traffic problems on the M1. The detail of the match was scant.

“What a goal from Frank – I amazingly captured this on film…just beautiful. A great start. However, Hull did well not to capitulate and had a fair share of the ball in that first period. Cousin hit the post, Cech made a few good stops. We had a few chances too, of course, but the usual suspects didn’t appear to be playing too well. We were begging for a second goal.

At the break, I handed out a few doughnuts to the boys – the Game 700 Meal overspill.

A much better team performance in the second-half. Hull gave Frank too much space and I thought he ran the game. He has been great this season. All of the first-half under performers stepped up in the second 45 – Anelka after his goal especially…the chances came and went…one miss from Malouda especially. However, it ended up 3-0 with the much-maligned Frenchman touching home.

I couldn’t understand a lot of the Hull songs to be honest. You had to admire their cheek, though, because they serenaded us with a song about fucking off back to our shit hole. The cheeky young whippersnappers.”

So, back to 2020.

The Chelsea team lined up in all white and it annoyed me. Was the limited colour clash of Hull City amber socks and Chelsea yellow socks enough to enforce a change? Or were Chelsea beholden to play in the second kit at least once in this cup run? Either way, I was not impressed. The home team were kitted-out in amber, black, amber, but with tigerish stripes on the top section of the shirts, how Cincinnati Bengals.

Chelsea were attacking the opposite end in the first-half. We were all stood, of course. As always. On just six minutes, a great ball out by Mateo Kovacic found Dave in acres of space. He quickly pumped in a cross, possibly over-hit, but it fell for Mason Mount to stab at goal. It rebounded out and Michy Batshuayi, lurking nicely, was on hand to follow up. A deflected shot gave the Hull City ‘keeper George Long no chance.

It was our first real attack.

Get in.

Alan, no more than ten rows in front of me : “THTCAUN.”

Some incisive passing from Kovacic set up good chances for Ross Barkley and Mason Mount, but Long was able to pull off two fine blocks. There had been an earlier half-chance for Michy. Callum was involved on the right, Pedro not so much on the left. But throughout much of the first-half it was the Chelsea story of the season; more passing than required, less shooting than required.

Pass, pass, pass, pass, sideways, sideways, sideways, sideways.

It was as if we were attempting to crabwalk.

Even so, we were on top. Not exactly coasting, but looking the more likely to score the next goal. Just before the whistle for half-time, a deep cross from Marcos Alonso was chested down by Dave who then shot at Long in the Hull goal but he pulled off another fine save.

Around me – despite us winning – I had endured voices of discontent during that first-half. And where we could, and should, have been cheering the boys on, there were periods of quietness in our ranks. Sometimes there is hot and cold in our support, often during the same game.

Hot and cold.

Noise and quiet.

Stillness and mayhem.

Frost and fire.

It would be nice to be warmed constantly by our support during every single game. For every fine pass to be applauded as loudly as ever wayward pass is booed.

“Yeah right.”

Me, looking at my phone at halftime: “COMLD.”

Sorry Alan. Better late than never.

The second-half began, and the home team came out of their shells a little. They had offered a few attacks in the first-half but not a great deal. In the second period they looked a little livelier. They definitely had the edge of the opening period. Jarrod Bowen, who reminded me of “Eriksen from Tottenham but not much longer”, was a threat and he raced on to a through ball before punching a shot just over Caballero’s bar.

Our play had deteriorated. Not much bite, not much ingenuity. Shot-shy.

Just after an hour, Barkley steadied himself before sending over a deep free-kick. Fikayo Tomori, who had formed a steady relationship again with Kurt Zouma, rose unhindered at the far post to head down, a perfect finish, past Long. My photos of the free-kick and the header are not great, but at least I was on hand to snap away as the players celebrated just yards away from me.

There is always a great fascination to see the body language of our players as they celebrate together. Smiles, hugs, knowing winks, loving looks. I must confess I go overboard at such moments, but these photographs take care of themselves really.

Time for some substitutions.

Billy Gilmour for Our Callum.

Willian for Our Mason.

Fine work from Willian, and a reverse pass to Pedro, but the winger edged it just past the far post. The same player finished weakly from the other side of the penalty area.

With twelve minutes remaining, I captured the free-kick by substitute Kamil Grosicki that hit our wall and ballooned up and into our goal.

Bollocks.

With me unable to watch a potential replay in ten days’ time, I was grimly aware that another Hull City goal would cause me grief for more than one reason. After cheaply giving the ball away, Bowen fed Grosicki but his shot was thankfully wide.

Tariq Lamptey replaced Pedro late on. We survived an even later home corner.

Hull 1 London 2.

Phew.

The soft Southerners, thankfully, had not been a soft touch.

Into Round Five we went.

We took our time exiting the stadium. Out onto Anlaby Road once more, and we walked past our hotel on the search for nosebag. A Greek restaurant was fully-booked, but I soon spotted the sign for “Tandoor Mahal.”

Perfect.

I was on the “Diet Cokes” now – my Sunday morning drive on my mind – but we settled in and enjoyed a lovely meal.

Prawn puri, lamb dhansak, boiled rice and peshwari naan.

I filled my boots. It was one of the best curries that I have eaten for a while. Top marks.

On the adjacent table was Lee, a Hull City supporter of around the same vintage as little old me, and we spent ages talking – lamenting – how football has changed over the past thirty years. We soon found that we had so many things in common. He was with his young daughter, and he really wanted to stay out with us, but after an elongated leaving ceremony he reluctantly said “cheerio.”

He wanted me to mention him in this blog.

So, there you go Lee. See you next time.

At about 10pm, we wandered back to our digs, passing some locals, who we engaged in some witty banter as is our wont.

“Where are you off lads”?

“Back to our hotel.”

“Oh no. It’s not The Carlton is it”?

“Oh yes.”

“Oh God.”

There was time for one last nightcap at the hotel before bed. Next to us at the bar were three Chelsea fans; a young couple from Birmingham and a chap from Stafford. I was, at last, comforted that other Chelsea supporters had chosen the same hotel as us.

It had been a long day. At just before 11pm, I called it a night. Anlaby Road had treated us well.

Next up, an away day – up the Fosse Way once more – to Leicester City.

I will see you there.

Featured album :

“Eden” : Everything But The Girl 1984.

Tales From A Game Too Far

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Chris Axon

Arsenal vs. Chelsea : 27 May 2017.

The F.A. Cup Final. The grand finale to the domestic season. Chelsea’s last game and my last game of 2016/2017. The final hurrah.

There is nothing quite like an F. A. Cup Final.

Or to be precise, there was nothing like an F. A. Cup Final.

Before we experienced wall-to-wall football on TV, before the Champions League skewed club priorities every season, back in the days of when the nation stopped as one and all the talk in the preceding week was about the game, the F.A. Cup Final was a truly magical event. When did the magic start fading? For me, it was when the game left the old Wembley Stadium, before it took temporary refuge at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for six seasons, and then returned to the spanking new, but generally unloved, new Wembley.

The Cup still stirs emotions, but that magic – difficult to describe to anyone who never grew up in an England which only showed one club game of football live on TV each season – has long since gone.

But, after the season-long chase for the title which was undoubtedly the main focus – to the point of obsession – we were gifted the chance to end the campaign with further glory and further fun. Tickets were purchased, plans were made. This was going to be a fine end to the season.

And then, two events happened which changed everything.

Staying up late, as I often do, on Monday night, I watched – horrified – on TV as news filtered through regarding the atrocity which befell the proud city of Manchester. I felt sadness, pain and anger. I slipped into a disturbed sleep and awoke the next day to the news of the full extent of the carnage. What sorrow. Immediately, there was the realisation that the F. A. Cup Final would be under intense scrutiny as there was the risk for similar attacks on personal freedom. There was, of course, no way that I would not go.

However, there was more sadness. At work on the Tuesday morning, I received a message from my wonderful friend Alan. After the game against Sunderland on Sunday, we had said our goodbyes at “The Lillee Langtry” and as we headed home, he paid a visit to his dear mother in a South London hospital. Sadly, the message relayed the heart-breaking news that his mother had passed away that Tuesday morning.

I fell silent and felt a great deal of pain. I only met Alan’s mother once – in around 1996 or 1997 if memory serves – but she was a lovely South London lady, just as her son is a lovely South London man. I passed on my sincere condolences to Alan – an only child like myself, our friendship goes deep – and our solid group of friends rallied support for Alan throughout the week. We hoped and prayed that he would be well enough to attend the game on Saturday.

There was a real feeling of relief, and happiness – if that is the right word – to hear on Friday that Alan would be attending.

This brought back some bittersweet memories for me of course. And it made me think. How very odd that my mother’s passing in 2015 was followed by a Chelsea Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, and that the first game after Alan’s mother’s passing would be a Chelsea Cup Final too. Two years ago, I needed to be around the greatest of friends to help me through the day. I am sure that Alan’s thoughts were along similar lines. And as he explained to me, his mother – who keenly followed all of our matches – would not have wanted him to have missed the game on behalf of her.

The football, at times, seemed irrelevant throughout the week, but as Saturday finally arrived, there was a new focus for all of us.

An intense lightning storm woke me at 3am during the night, followed by deafening thunder and a monsoon-like deluge. It was a dramatic start to the day for sure. I struggled to get back to sleep. Would Saturday be sunny, as forecast, or would the rain continue? With a Chelsea Football Club statement asking for no bags to be brought to Wembley in light of the terrorist threat, I pondered options for getting my camera into the stadium. Eventually I drifted back to sleep.

Glenn picked me up at 7.45am. He drove in to Frome to collect PD, who had also awoken amid the light show at 3am. On to collect Parky, a breakfast of champions at Bradford-on-Avon at 8.30am, and Glenn then headed east, London-bound for the last time this season.

We wanted to continue a theme for this season; a little pub-crawl in previously virgin territory. Yes, we knew that there would be songs and chants and revelry at a number of watering holes throughout the capital, but we opted for a little tranquility before joining forces with Alan and others later. From 11.30am to 2pm, we nestled ourselves within the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and sampled four pubs within a few hundred yards of each other; “The Wilton Arms”, “The Nag’s Head”, “The Star” and “The Grenadier.” We were in Belgravia, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate going. It felt right that we should be starting our day in Chelsea, although of course Stamford Bridge itself is in Hammersmith & Fulham. Each pub had hanging baskets outside, wooden interiors, tons of character, lots of history. The sun was out, LP’s and PD’s shorts were on, and the beer was certainly hitting the spot.

At “The Nag’s Head” we chatted to a Russian Chelsea fan from Moscow, living in London since 2004, and off to the match too.

Just as we arrived at “The Star”, two US Arsenal fans, wearing replica shirts – shocker – were just leaving. I reminded them of the Arsenal way : “remember to beat the crowds, stay until the end.” They laughed, but I’m not convinced they understood what I meant.

Four pints to the good, we headed up towards Paddington, where the London-based lads were waiting at “Fountains Abbey” on Praed Street.

A hug for Alan, and I was pleased to see that he was full of smiles. We chatted away and it was lovely to see that he had made the right decision. His dear mother, although probably in a little pain on Sunday night, had enquired how Chelsea had fared in our last game of the season. That simple question – his mother asking about the team – had probably swayed him further. There was no way that Alan would miss the Cup Final.

Ah, the final. Throughout the week, when the game flitted in to my head, I remained confident. I hadn’t been more confident leading up to a major final since the 1998 trip to Stockholm. It seemed that everyone shared similar thoughts. I chatted to Ed, who was one of the few who were mentioning the game itself. He had been confident, yet was beginning to worry as kick-off approached. I calmed him a little.

“Nah, we’ll win. We’re too good for them. No doubt. And there is no point feeling guilty about being confident. Listen, it’s what Liverpool fans in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties were, and what United fans around fifteen years ago were. They were great teams and their fans knew it. Nothing wrong with being confident.”

After five pints or more, I was even beginning to convince myself too.

In another moment – maybe when I was less confident – I spoke quietly to Glenn.

“Of course, you realise that if we lose to these fuckers, our next two games will be against them too; in July in Beijing and in August at Wembley.”

Shudder.

In light of the call to be inside the stadium an hour before kick-off, we headed off for the tube earlier than normal. No last minute flit to Wembley this time. In previous finals, we have often arrived just in time for the last few formalities. No chance of that this time.

We tubed it to Marylebone and caught the train north. Our carriage was mainly Chelsea. The few Arsenal fans spotted were wearing replica shirts in the main. Of course, many Chelsea were too – it’s a Cup Final tradition, I wore a 1970 replica in 1994 – but there was a noticeable difference before the two sets of fans. Of our group of ten, only Gary and John were wearing club merchandise.

Lacoste Watch :

Parky – white.

Ed – chocolate.

Chris – pale blue.

(Incidentally, I was wearing blue all over : blue shirt, blue jeans, blue trainers, blue rain jacket and even my aftershave came from a blue bottle. And there was blue language too of course.)

We arrived at Wembley Stadium station at around 4.30pm. Chelsea were all around. I suspect Arsenal were using the more traditional Wembley Park option. The sun was beating down. There was not much of a queue to get in. My camera, slung around my neck, was waved in, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Up the escalators and inside. Wembley looked vast and we were in with plenty of time to spare, located in the upper tier, above the “Frank Lampard corner flag.” Alan, Gary, Ed and Neil were about thirty seats away. There were a few familiar faces nearby. It is amazing how we always seem to find ourselves among friends. At each seat, there was a Chelsea flag and a Chelsea bar scarf. A young lad appeared in the row in front and he was wearing an authentic Benetton rugby top from the mid-‘eighties. If ever there was a garment which is much desired to this day from that golden age of football clobber, then this was it. It is the holy grail of casualdom. I once owned one, albeit for only a few weeks, and that is a tale which I will eventually tell when the mood takes me, and originals now fetch ridiculous sums. I told the kid that I wanted to kill him and he smiled.

At the Eastern end, a huge Arsenal banner hung from the rafters :

“History. Tradition. Class.”

I think they left out “pomposity.”

At our western end, a simpler message :

“Pride Of London.”

As the minutes ticked by, the stadium filled. Our end appeared to fill quicker. Glenn noted a new feature, a thin section of obviously corporate spectators in the upper deck above the Royal Box; no colours on show there. In the corporate middle tier, I reckoned that there was just as much blue as red, a positive sign. Wembley has recently tightened the rules on bringing flags and banners into the stadium and the arena looked less football-like because of it. It’s as if they are saying “leave the atmosphere to us.”

A huge FA Cup mosaic adorned the pitch. Young dancers sprung on to the pitch waving bar scarves.

“It wasn’t like this in 1997.”

Of course, the team picked itself. It was the team that I would definitely have chosen.

Courtois.

Azpilicueta – Luiz – Cahill

Moses – Matic – Kante – Alonso

Pedro – Costa – Hazard

The minutes ticked by.

The next part of this FA Cup Saturday was about to unfold. And it is quite a story. Over a year ago, my good mate Rob took part in a short film which followed two football fans on a personal journey into the once elitist world of opera. Rob and Harry are Chelsea fans of a certain vintage and were not into opera at all. They were coerced by their pals Mike and Adam to attend various operatic shindigs, culminating in a performance of Giussepe Verdi’s “La Traviata” at the Royal Opera House, all the while being filmed along the way. It is a lovely film and won awards at the London Film Awards in 2016. Adam and Harry recently attended a film festival in LA too.

London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QxaLMiHsUU

Los Angeles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEI1PmgMLVA&t=328s

To cut a very long story short, Rob and Adam – Harry was on a family holiday so could not attend – were to join twenty other football fans from around the country in the singing of the traditional Cup Final hymn “Abide With Me.” I promised Rob that I would capture the moment with my camera; it is why I was so worried about getting the long lens inside the stadium. I spotted the group walk onto the pitch. My camera was ready.

Just before their moment, a montage appeared on the huge TV screens. As Eddie Newton and Sol Campbell were chosen to bring the FA Cup on to the pitch, a grainy clip of Eddie’s goal against Middlesbrough in 1997 was shown. An echo of a different era really. How time flies, eh?

The crowd quietened. I have noticed how “Abide With Me” seems to play less and less a role in the FA Cup Final these days. On my first visit in 1994, with my father having passed away the previous year, the words drew tears from myself as I sang along. Since then, on all subsequent visits, I have noted fewer and fewer fans joining in. Whether or not it was because of the events of Manchester or not, and the need to show a sense of community and shared kinship, on this occasion I sensed more than usual joining in.

As the words flowed, I joined in, and clicked away.

My thoughts were with Alan, just yards away.

Next up, the national anthem. Another show of solidarity. It was as loud that I can ever remember at Wembley.

The stadium was full now. A red-half and a less prominent blue-half. The two teams assembled on the centre-circle. Thoughts were now centred on the events of Monday night. At first there was applause but as the announcement continued, everyone hushed. I was very impressed. There followed a minute of complete silence in memory for those slain in Manchester.

RIP.

The game began. We stood, high up in row 22 of the top deck, for the entire game. Not everyone was stood, though. A fine long ball from David Luiz found Pedro but we failed to capitalise. For the next few minutes, we struggled to get a foothold. Arsenal looked livelier and more focused. N’Golo Kante struggled to keep the ball and we watched as an Arsenal move developed. A ball was slung in to our box. A clearance was knocked towards Alexis Sanchez who raised both arms and appeared to pat the ball down with his hands.

“Handball” thought everyone.

There was no referee’s whistle, nothing. Our players appeared to momentarily stop, but play continued. Sanchez slotted home.

“Well, that was good of you, you prick. It was handball, knobhead.”

But there was still no whistle.

The referee, oddly, raced over to the linesman.

“Not sure why he is doing that. He was only a few yards away from the handball.”

The referee and linesman chatted for a few seconds. I was absolutely adamant that the goal would be disallowed. It wasn’t. The referee pointed to the centre-circle. Disbelief all round. The Arsenal players seemed to not celebrate as if they were shocked too. Bollocks. Barely five minutes were on the clock.

During the first quarter, we really struggled and it was a huge surprise to us all. Where there had been fight and togetherness during the league campaign, here we looked listless and disjointed. We were slow in closing Arsenal’s attacking threat, and I lost count of the number of misplaced passes. As our play failed to live up to the standards set by the team this season, our support quietened. We were all in shock.

Sanchez set up Ozil, whose touch took him a little wide. His shot beat Courtois, but Gary Cahill’s nimble back-heal on the goal-line saved us from going 2-0 down. Then, Welbeck headed down and onto the post from a corner, and an Arsenal player was thankfully unable to follow it up.

We could have been 3-0 down. Heads were shaking all around me.

“When have we played as bad as this?”

“Arsenal away.”

We tried to rally.

“Come on Chelsea.”

We tried moving the ball into dangerous areas. To be truthful, Pedro was his usual energetic self and was our biggest threat of the opening period. Diego Costa had a couple of half chances. Eden struggled to get involved; I had hoped that this would be his final. Moses out on the right had a lot of the ball but struggled with the final ball. But it was our defensive frailty which caused us more worry. Matic was especially slow in covering ground and blocking.

Arsenal threatened further with Sanchez a huge threat. Courtois saved well from Xhaka.

With the first-half moving on, we improved slightly. Hazard fed in Pedro, but his shot from only fifteen yards out flew high over the bar and in to the packed Arsenal lower tier, full of jester hats, and face-paint too, no doubt. That was our best chance of the game thus far. But we were clearly second best.

Just before the whistle, we won a free kick on the edge of the box after Pedro’s heels were clipped. It was a perfect position for the left foot of Marcos Alonso. His effort sailed over, knocking the jester hat off an Arsenal fan in row Z.

At the break, neighbouring fans passed on news that the Arsenal goal should have been disallowed for offside in addition to the obvious handball. The ghost of David fucking Elleray lingers on.

Only one phrase dominated my thoughts at half-time :

“We can’t play as badly in the second half.”

I would have like to have been a fly on the wall inside our changing room during the interval. Thankfully, we started the second period a lot more positively. It roused the Chelsea support, who had been generally quiet as the first-half passed. A few shots from Pedro, Kante and Moses hinted at a fine reaction. The Chelsea support roared.

“Carefree.”

Pedro continued to be our biggest threat. We watched as he curled a fine effort just past the far post.

PD wanted Pedro to drop back and replace Moses at right back with Willian being brought on. I concurred. The manager had a different idea. On the hour, Conte replaced the very poor Matic with the much-lauded Cesc Fabregas. “The Magic Hat” reverberated around our end. He was met with boos from the the Goons of course. The Wembley pitch looked huge and we seemed unable to exploit its spaces. Bellerin tested Courtois from just inside the box, and our ‘keeper made the save of the match, pushing the ball out with outstretched arms. We roared our approval.

Down below us, Cesc shot wide. The minutes were ticking by.

With about twenty minutes remaining, Moses – who was having an up and down game – fell weakly inside the box. The referee judged a dive. It was his second yellow. Despite much protest, he left the field.

Twenty-eight thousand fans inside the stadium thought the same thought : “that’s fucked it.”

Willian replaced Pedro, who had arguably been our best player. He was soon involved down our right. Strangely, we looked more effective. A rare corner amounted to nothing, but then Willian crossed in to the box. For the first time all match, the Arsenal defenders were sloppy and indecisive. Diego took a touch and volleyed past Ospina.

“GET IN YOU BASTARD.”

Our end exploded. A moment of pandemonium mixed with real disbelief.

“How the bloody hell are we back in the game?”

Less than a minute later, that bearded knobhead Giroud sent over a cross which Ramsey headed in, past Courtois, a gaping goal an easy target.

Despair.

The Pompous Ones boomed with joy at the other end, and probably spilled their popcorn.

“Fuck.”

With time quickly disappearing, we tried to counter. David Luiz, who had supplied the attackers with a couple of excellent long passes, and who had been well-placed to head away several Arsenal efforts, went close with a header from an angle.

Bellerin, breaking with pace, could have sealed our fate but brushed a low shot wide. I turned around and sighed. This was too much.

In a position which mirrored his goal, Diego volleyed at Ospina. A yard either side of the ‘keeper and we would have miraculously levelled it again.

The clock ticked on.

Conte replaced Diego with Michy Batshuayi. Ozil hit the post at the other end. Luiz spent a fair portion of the last few minutes as a spare attacker.

It was simply not to be.

As the last few seconds ticked by, we slowly edged our way out.

The final whistle blew. We just wanted to leave, to get ourselves on the train back to the city centre. We should have, in hindsight, stayed to applaud the team, but we just wanted to get home. This was my forty-seventh game of the season and I felt exhausted.

Bizarrely, there were a few Arsenal fans in the line for the train. We wondered why they did not want to stay to see the trophy lifted. The magic of the cup, eh? In that line for the train – gallows humour to the fore, jokes helping us through – it appeared that we were in brighter spirits than the victorious Gooners. What an odd bunch they are. Maybe it was dawning on them that this would not be Wenger’s last game at the helm after all. How we laughed.

On the train, there was a fair bit of mainly good-natured banter between both sets of fans. A little knot of Arsenal kept singing in praise of Petr Cech, and it got boring. There was nothing malicious. However, they then decided – oh, you fools – to sing “WWYWYWS?” at us and this was met with a far more prickly response. The message was clear; you can take the piss out of our players, our club, but do not take the piss out of us, the fans. And do not, ever, sing that song to us.

Our support has never weakened. We have always shown up.

One Chelsea supporter stood up, and ranted at them, and it was powerful stuff. Although I can’t condone violence nor the threat of it, it certainly shut the fuckers up.

Very soon we sang :

“It’s gone quiet, over there.”

They had no answer.

Fuck’em.

We made our way back to Barons Court. The last tube journey of the season. We chatted to a few fellow fans. There was the briefest of post-mortems. One chap advocated using Cesc from the very start to open up the vast Wembley spaces. But, in hindsight, I would not have altered the starting eleven that the manager chose. It just seemed that it had been one game too far. Regardless of the farce of the first goal, we knew that we were well beaten. It had been a long day. At a service station on the A4, where Glenn and myself once bumped into Mark Hughes after a Chelsea game in 1998, we had an impromptu feast. The last food had been at breakfast. My mouth was as dry as a desert; a bottle of Coke has never tasted better. We were exhausted. I fell asleep on the drive home. Glenn made good time and I was back home before midnight.

It had been a long old day and a long old season. It ended with a poor performance, but we must not focus on that. It has been an exceptional campaign, hasn’t it? I must say that I have loved every damn minute of it; from the excesses of the US in the summer to the biting tundra of Ice Station Burnley, from the pubs of Sunderland and Liverpool to the bars around Chelsea, from the many highs to the few lows, from the Chuckle Bus and beyond, one step beyond, it has been one of the most rewarding seasons ever.

2016/17 : the numbers –

650 miles by train.

8,000 miles by plane.

12,500 miles by car.

115,000 words.

7,500 photographs.

1 league championship trophy.

We went to work, didn’t we? Too bloody right we did.

Grazie mille Antonio.

Have a great summer everyone – and many thanks for your continued and precious support.

In memory of Eileen Davidson : 28 July 1931 to 23 May 2017.

Tales From The Long Goodbye

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Sunderland : 21 May 2017.

If ever the old adage of “Chelsea is not just about football” was true, then it was certainly true for our last league game of the season against relegated Sunderland. And although there was chatter among some fans for us to achieve a Premier League record thirty wins, my mind was full of anticipation for the trophy celebrations at the end of the game. To be honest, I thought that the win was a foregone conclusion. Sunderland have finished bottom of the division for a reason. Label me, for once, as being blasé, but I am sure that I was not alone. There was also the emotion of John Terry’s last-ever appearance in a Chelsea shirt at Stamford Bridge. I wasn’t quite sure how that would play out, but it promised to be quite a day.

On the Saturday evening, I replayed John Terry’s speech at the end of our last game of the 2015/16 season, when he spoke of the team’s struggles throughout the campaign, but also of his desire to stay at Stamford Bridge for another year, and to indeed retire as a Chelsea man. On several occasions, his voice faltered. Always an emotional man, I honestly wondered how on Earth he would cope one year later. For us fans, a day of high emotion was on the cards. For him, it would be even more intense. I had a feeling that everything would be about our captain. There was a realisation that it would possibly overshadow, if that is possible, the trophy presentation. Oh well. Whatever will be will be, as they say in football circles.

While I was watching John Terry on “You Tube” on Saturday evening, many other Chelsea pals were at an event at Stamford Bridge which paid homage to Eddie McCreadie’s team of the mid- ‘seventies. It represented his first appearance at Chelsea since he was sacked in 1977 – infamously for allegedly asking the board for a company car – and it was a major coup. For decades, he had not ventured from his new home in Tennessee due to his fear of flying. It looked like a top night. For once, I looked on from afar, and lived vicariously through the photographs of others. Many of the players from that era had attended the event. Lovely stuff.

On the Sunday morning, an early start for The Chuckle Bus, I drove up to London for the last time this season. For the FA Cup on Saturday, Glenn is driving; I will be able to relax and enjoy a few pints ahead of a final hurrah at Wembley. Glenn and myself headed down to the ground early on. We made a bee-line for the hotel where I hoped to be lucky enough to bump in to Eddie Mac. We stayed for a while, met a few friends, but our former manager was elsewhere. Not to worry, I got to meet Steve Wicks – our “flaxen-haired pivot” as much-lampooned former programme editor Colin Benson described him during his second spell at the club from 1986 to 1988 – and it is always lovely to meet former heroes. I wondered if Eddie McCreadie would be on the pitch at half-time. I never ever saw him play for us. There was also a quick word of welcome to former manager Ken Shellito, now living in Malaysia. Brilliant.

As we headed back to meet up with the lads in “The Famous Three Kings” at West Kensington, we noted that the club were handing out free match programmes. The sun was out. It was going to be a lovely day.

The usual faces had assembled in the pub for our final Chelsea home game of the season. I spotted several Juventus supporters in the little snug upstairs. They were assembling for their game against Crotone which would kick-off at 2pm. It would be a potential league decider. I couldn’t resist saying a few words to them in both Italian and English. It turned out that the boozer is the HQ of the Juve London Supporters Club. What a small world. They spoke of Antonio Conte and of Juan Cuadrado. The two clubs have shared many players and managers over the years, and that’s lovely for me. I showed them a photo on my phone of me at the Stadio Communale in 1988, and this was met with wide smiles. I bellowed “Vinci Per Noi” as I left.

We called in to “The Clarence” – news broke through that JT was starting – and then made our way to Stamford Bridge, bumping into others en route. On the approach to the stadium, Fulham Road was adorned with signs declaring “The Home Of The Champions.” There already was an air of celebration in the air. The football match almost seemed an afterthought.

I briefly centred my thoughts on our team. I had presumed that JT might come on as a substitute, probably for Gary Cahill, so he could be on the pitch at the end of the game. Antonio Conte had obviously decided upon other plans. Elsewhere, a strong team, and with Fabregas instead of Matic and Willian instead of Pedro.

Courtois – Azpilicueta, Terry, Luiz – Moses, Kante, Fabregas, Alonso – Willian, Costa, Hazard.

The hotel was being used as a canvas for two huge murals. To the left was a large image of John Terry and Antonio Conte in an embrace. To the right, the two words being uttered by them both :

“Thanks.”

“Grazie.”

Perfect.

Sunderland had brought down 1,500 from the north-east. It has been a Weary season for them. Their supporters looked like a sea of red-and-white striped deckchairs in the lazy summer sun. The minutes passed by. The usual pre-match Chelsea songs echoed around the packed stands.

It seemed that every seat was being used. Sadly, down below me in the Matthew Harding Lower, one seat was empty. After being recently hospitalised, Cathy was forced to miss her first Chelsea home game since 1976, and only her second one ever since that date. She was undoubtedly in my thoughts, and in the thoughts of others, throughout the day. I have known Cathy as a “Chelsea face” for decades, but only really got to know her via trips to the US in 2006 and 2007. Her support has known no bounds. I hoped that her next match would be at Wembley next weekend.

“Get well soon, Cath.”

The league season had begun with the silvery shimmer of the Italian flag in the Matthew Harding Upper. As the teams appeared on the touchline, The Shed unravelled its most ambitious project yet; yet more shimmering mosaics, horizontal blue and white, with a large image of John Terry centrally-placed, and with trophies in front. Then, a huge sign was draped over the balcony –

“THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING.”

There was another JT-themed flag in the Matthew Harding Lower below me. On the pitch, our captain led the team out with his two children Summer and George walking alongside him. It was a spectacular scene. The applause increased. Flames roared in front of the East Lower. Bathed in sunshine, a riot of colour, Stamford Bridge had rarely looked more photogenic.

The game had barely begun when the home crowd boomed “Antonio! Antonio! Antonio!” and the dapper Italian did a slow 360-degree salute to us.

Soon after, the crowd followed this up with a chant for Roman Abramovich. To my surprise, not only did the bashful owner smile and wave, he stood up too. Bless him. It is only right that we show him some love too.

Our game at the Stadium of Light in December was a 1-0 win – that Courtois save, wow – and had given us three vital away points. It seemed like a highly important victory at the time. It gave us belief heading in to Christmas. How odd that they could not break through on that night, but it only took them three minutes in the home game. A Sunderland free-kick resulted in a ball ending up at the feet of the unmarked Javier Manquillio – who? – at the far post. As John Terry scrambled to cover, the Sunderland player smashed the ball past Thibaut.

Oh bugger it.

There would not be another clean sheet for our ‘keeper.

On six minutes, the away fans in the far corner began singing in honour of their own club legend.

“One Bradley Lowery, there’s only one Bradley Lowery.”

I joined in, momentarily, but I was in the minority. The away fans sang away, bless them. At the end of the sixth minute, we were awarded a free-kick. Marcos Alonso slammed a curler against the bar and we watched with increasing incredulity as player after player passed the ball in and around the packed deck-chairs inside the Sunderland box.

The ball came out to Diego Costa, who shifted the ball to Eden Hazard, who moved it on to George Hilsdon. Then the ball was swept out to Jimmy Windridge, then to Tommy Law, then to Hughie Gallacher. A shot was blocked. Tommy Lawton pushed the ball to Tommy Walker, then to Roy Bentley. Another blocked shot. The ball fell to Ken Shellito, who shimmied past his marker, and touched the ball inside to Barry Bridges. A firm tackle robbed him of the ball, but John Hollins pounced and won the ball back. A fine move involving Clive Walker, Pat Nevin, Kerry Dixon, Gianluca Vialli and Claude Makelele set up Frank Lampard. His shot ricocheted into the path of John Terry, who swiped at the ball but could not connect. Eventually, the ball reached Willian who smashed the ball home.

Thank fuck for that.

Willian leapt in the air right in front of a gaggle of mates who were watching in the Shed Lower. The ground, unsurprisingly, roared.

Alan : “THTCAUN.”

Chris : “COMLD.”

We went close on several other occasions and were in total control. Willian was right in the middle of everything, causing panic in the Sunderland box whenever he had the ball. John Terry caught a loose ball well but his shot was deflected away for a corner. It came from just outside the “D” of the penalty area. It could have been his crowning glory. He still, I am sure, has not scored from outside the box. Moses fired over. David Luiz went close. It was all Chelsea.

On twenty-six minutes, Jordan Pickford booted the ball off for a throw-in.

“Well, that was odd.”

It then all slotted in to place.

It was obvious that John Terry was to be substituted. I remembered back to 2015 and Didier’s last game when he was carried off by team mates. That seemed a little excessive, but seemed OK in the grand scheme of things. For John Terry, things were more contrived. He clapped us all, received hugs from his team mates and a few Sunderland players, including former blue Fabio Borini, and was given a guard of honour by his Chelsea team mates. Of course, the Chelsea crowd were lapping it all up. I was in two minds. A classy gesture or pure showbiz schmaltz? I am still undecided.

Ron Harris’ thoughts would be interesting to hear.

Regardless, he was given a fine ovation. He was, appropriately, replaced by Gary Cahill.

Alan, ever thoughtful, sent a video of the JT substitution to Cathy in her Middlesex hospital.

Willian, the constant danger, went close. For a while, it seemed implausible that we would not score a second goal. With Diego Costa on the periphery, however, we lacked a goal scoring touch inside the box. Diego was booked for a messy scuffle with John O’Shea, the lanky deck-chair attendant. Would it be one of those Diego games?

At the break, it was tied at 1-1 and we could hardly fathom it.

Sadly, Eddie McCreadie did not make it down to the pitch during the half-time break. Neil Barnett did mention him, though. He was watching from a box in the corporate tier of the West Stand. Additionally, we spotted Claudio Ranieri was sitting a few seats away from Roman.

The second-half began and it was much the same as before. Victor Moses took over Willian’s mantle and put in some lovely advances down the right. On the hour, at last we broke through. Eden Hazard drifted in from the left and effortlessly smashed the ball past Pickford.

We were 2-1 up. Get in.

The noise boomed again around Stamford Bridge. We were winning. Eden had just scored. Roman was happy. We were all happy.

“Carefree. Wherever you may be.”

Antonio was serenaded again. The 360 again. He then replaced Diego Costa with Michy Batshuayi. As he strode off, he too did a 360, but tellingly waved both hands to all four stands.

“He’s off to China then.”

When Pedro replaced Eden on seventy minutes, my eyes seared in to his skull and I begged him not to wave too. Thankfully, he didn’t.

Meanwhile, on Humberside, that lot were scoring five, six, seven. I wondered when they would be allowed to play their three extra games to allow them to be champions this season. At Anfield, Liverpool were winning, thus condemning Arsenal to fifth place. When we ended up in tenth place last season, there were no protests nor public outcry, nor a reduction in attendance figures. After Arsenal’s season – “fifth place, how dare they!!!” – expect the end of the world as we know it.

With around ten minutes to go, Pedro nipped in to head home after Cesc’s long ball was not gathered by Pickford. I was reminded of the same player’s rapid strike against Manchester United in the autumn. His gleeful little dance below me was joy itself.

Bizarrely, man of the moment Michy Batshuayi then scored two further goals in time added on for stoppages. Firstly, an opportunist toe poke from a fine pass from Pedro. He loved that. Soon after, wide on the right, he appeared to be offside and almost gave up the chase on a ball that was pumped in to space. He almost apologetically picked the ball up, strode forward and curled a fine shot past the luckless Pickford.

Chelsea 5 Sunderland 1.

The final whistle followed just after.

Just champion.

Unlike in previous seasons – even when we won it in 2015 – virtually nobody left the stadium. We waited patiently for the trophy presentation. But, I guess, many were waiting for John Terry too. The Sunderland fans gradually drifted away. Elsewhere, the stadium remained at capacity. We waited.

Dennis Wise appeared with the 2016/17 Premier League trophy and slowly walked out to place it on the plinth, which was luckily placed at our end of the stadium. We were in prime seats. Dennis kissed the trophy and smiled the cheekiest of grins. Inexplicably, and to my surprise, my eyes became moist. It was Dennis – “The Rat” – who had hoisted the FA Cup at Wembley in 1997, the greatest day in my life at that time. I was sent reeling back in time, and I welled up. Oh how we celebrated at Wembley on that glorious day. Our club was a different beast in those days. In truth, it felt more like my club in 1997 than in 2017 for reasons which are far too profound for me to tackle at this moment in time. Suffice to say, it all felt a lot more personal and pertinent – and relevant – twenty years ago than now. In 1997, we were a tight bunch. We had been through it all. The FA Cup was a final reward for our years of penury. These days, any Tom, Dick and Harriet supports Chelsea and successes seem to be expected by many.

For those who were there, in 1997, I am sure my emotions are easily understood.

I gathered myself, wiped my eyes, and awaited the next stage of the trophy presentation.

Neil Barnett was the MC.

First up, a few squad members who had not featured, including Eduardo and Masonda. Then, the manager Antonio. What a reaction from the crowd. He looked euphoric. Then, each and every one of the first team regulars were announced. Special cheers for N’Golo, for Eden, for Dave (who had, remarkably, played every single minute of our league campaign this season.)

Then Gary Cahill. Big cheers.

Then John Terry’s face appeared on the TV screen. His bottom lip seemed to be quivering.

“Oh, for fuck sake John, keep it steady.”

The captain walked slowly towards the trophy. A pause. Both John and Gary picked it up. Another pause.

And then the joint lift of the huge trophy above heads.

More flames and tinsel.

GET IN YOU FUCKING BEAUTY.

2005. 2006. 2010. 2015. 2017.

How sweet it is.

The players were then swamped by wives, girlfriends, sons and daughters, plus the gentlemen of the press. The central area became crowded and too much was going on. We had a superb view of it all but I felt for the fans in The Shed.

“We sort out the pre-match display and are then the forgotten ones.”

The trophy was passed from player to player. We spotted the Sky team of Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville and Graeme Souness chat to Thibaut and Eden.

Inevitably, eyes turned towards John Terry. A montage of his most famous moments in our colours was featured on the TV screens. He stood, motionless, watching too. It looked like his bottom lip was going again. Neil gave him the microphone. His first act was to thank Steve Holland, off to pastures new with England, and he was given a fine reception. John Terry then walked past the photographers and spoke of the love that Roman Abramovich has for the club. For a moment, with John looking up at the owner in his executive area, speaking with such feeling, it resembled a footballing version of Romeo declaring undying love under Juliet’s balcony.

Roman’s name was again given a resounding roar. More embarrassed waves from the owner.

John then spoke of his love for the club, for us fans, but especially his love of his own family.

“I love you all” and his voice broke.

My eyes became a little moist. Good job I had my sunglasses on.

I then wondered if we had all lost the plot.

It’s only football, right?

Shankly was of course wrong. It’s not more important than life and death. What is?

And yet sport – football for me – does stir these incredible emotions. It is not to be laughed at. Football has given me some of my most amazing moments. I could only imagine what John was going through. His last day at his place of work for the past twenty years. A last goodbye.

I have only experienced something similar once before. My last visit to the old Yankee Stadium in 2008 – after twenty-three visits – left me a blubbering wreck. Heaven knows what I will be like when we move out in two years’ time. After around three-hundred and fifty games at Stamford Bridge, John had every right to be suitably moved.

Football has the power to touch us in so many ways and long may it continue.

I stood with Alan, Glenn and PD, our arms around each other’s shoulders.

It was a proud moment for PD; he had completed a full set of league games for the first time ever.

A hug for John Terry with Antonio Conte. A few words from the manager. A last few photographs of the captain in front of the Matthew Harding.

A wave to us.

And then a slow walk down to The Shed.

For many of our new fans, it must seem impossible for a Chelsea with no John Terry. But this club will continue. And we are in a supremely healthy position; the manager has formed a fine team ethos this season. And I know that many words have been written to describe John Terry, but my last comment for now is that during a potentially frustrating season for him, John has exemplified what a consummate professional he is by not giving the media a single story of negativity nor nonsense. For this reason alone, it has been one of his finest seasons. Bless him.

Who knows, he might even score the winner at Wembley next Saturday.

For Cathy.

CHELSEA/esque

A Blue World In Black And White

Tag Archives: 2016-2017

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