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Tales From North And South America

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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 59th 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 60th 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 14th 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 33rd 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 60th 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 69th 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 Yellow And Blue

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Dynamo Kiev vs. Chelsea : 14 March 2019.

Full length murals on the sides of grimy apartment blocks. Raised wooden walkways. Flowers on recent roadside memorials. Soaring residential buildings brutally blotting out the sky. Clusters of ornate gold-topped domes. The wide expanse of the Dnipro River. The striking faces of tall young women. The wrinkled faces of crouching old men. The awkwardly ornate buildings circling Independence Square. Statues and monuments. Cellar bars open twenty-four hours. Prostitutes walking the pavements. The storied governmental buildings of Kreschtayk Street. The “D” of the local football team. The pride of the city. The Cyrillic alphabet. Fading memories of recent sieges and riots. The orange revolution with snipers on the streets. Steep cobbled roads. Men pestering for photographs with monkeys. Outlines in white paint marking where innocents fell in 2014. The yellow and blue of the national flag. The sadness of strife.

This was Kiev.

And another magical trip to a far-flung part of Europe with the love of my life.

Back in the autumn of 2015, I didn’t attend our 0-0 draw in the Champions League in Kiev against Dynamo as had I elected to go to the other two group phase games in Portugal and Israel instead. Those who went to Ukraine reported back that it was a historical city, with some great sights, but it had been rather dicey in places. I easily remembered that some innocent Chelsea supporters in a city centre bar were attacked by local hooligans on the night before the game – I distinctly recollect searching for the location of the bar on Google Earth on my home PC that evening – and there was talk that several mates were very thankful that a heavy army and police presence was available to escort the away hardcore to the stadium.

But this time, in 2019, I simply had to attend. The lure of an edgy, historic city was just too much to resist.

Flights – with Air France from Heathrow via Paris CDG – and accommodation in an apartment on Independence Square were booked. Car parking at LHR was booked. Match tickets – the ridiculous sum of £1.50 – were bought. It was a great price; it worked out at £225 for three nights.

The fun began at 2am on the morning of Wednesday 13 March. I collected PD, then Parky soon after. The M4 had a closure, so I changed track onto the A303 before hitting the M3 and M25. We reached our parking spot at Terminal Four at around 4.15am. It had been a breeze. The flight left at 6.25am. At Paris, we bumped into two brothers from Stockton-On-Tees who I first met in Stockholm in 1998. The five of us were the only Chelsea on the flight. I caught up on some shut-eye on the three-hour flight to Kiev’s Boryspil airport. We touched down to clear blue skies bang on time at 1.55pm. I soon bumped into Steve and Neil, who had just flown in via Warsaw. Our cab was waiting outside to take us to the apartment.

I was buzzing.

Here we were.

In Ukraine.

In my pre-trip thoughts and daydreams, I had already conjured up a phrase that might turn out be relevant to describe the city. I had surmised that Kiev might well be grubby, and not just around the edges, but in the centre too. As we clambered into a dirty cab – its windows needing a clean, the aroma of its upholstery rather piquant – and as we drove into the city on a wide and dusty main road, I wondered if grubbiness might well dominate the entire trip. In retrospect, this initial impression turned out to be wide of the mark; although Kiev was to show signs of battle fatigue, its streets and pavements were ridiculously litter-free and the locals were smart dressers.

The cab ride, which took about forty-five minutes, gave us a scintillating introduction. The scale of the city exhilarated me. Many new apartment blocks were being built on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, and everything reminded me of Moscow in 2008. The residential blocks were simply huge. We careered over the massive river, then caught a glimpse of the large and impressive statue of the Motherland Monument, passing right underneath it. Soon there would be the first of many domes of churches and cathedrals. We hugged the river. There were cobbled streets. The sun shone. Kiev was charming me. Then, a real treat. We turned left down another cobbled street and I soon spotted the architectural joy of the white columns marking the entrance to Dynamo Kiev’s own stadium – right in the city centre – which the club uses alongside the larger Olympic Stadium a mile or two further south. It is named after the former Dynamo Kiev and Russia – before partition – team manager Valeriy Lobanovskyi. Five minutes later, up a steep hill – more cobbles – and then down to our apartment. It was perfect.

A quick change and we were out at just before 5pm. We had spotted a couple of cafes near our digs, but chose a bar on the corner of our block which intimated that it was open twenty-four hours. In we went. In this cellar bar – “Copper Bar” – we soon spotted Scott and Paul, who I remember bumping into in Baku last season, and we sat down at a table with them for a good two hours or so. Six pints of “Lvivske 1715” later, we were well on the way. We had a good old natter about all things Chelsea. Scott rarely misses a game. There was talk of the game in Boston in May that Paul and Scott are attending, but that will be a game too far for me. They were both in Perth in July, so their travels this season will see Chelsea play on three continents, or four if we get to Baku. Respect.

They then had to go off and meet others for a meal in the city and we tentatively agreed to meet up with them at a restaurant outside the metro stop at the stadium at 5pm on the following day. Stan from High Wycombe then duly arrived with two other Chelsea lads, and the chit-chat continued. Luke and Aroha then showed up. Things were warming up nicely.

At about 8pm or so, we clambered into a cab and were soon climbing up the hill behind the square. I had ear-marked the best rooftop bar in Kiev – “B Hush” which sits on top of the Intercontinental Hotel – and this turned out to be a fine diversion. The five of us settled in to a quiet corner and three more beers soon followed. There was the beat of music in the background. This was as chilled as it gets. It was so relaxing. Outside, the night was cold, but we did not care. The V shaped roof-terrace overlooked a square which housed St. Michael’s Cathedral and a large governmental building with pillars, both floodlit, to the left. To our right, a building was lit with the yellow and blue of the national flag, with the ornate tower and domes of St. Sophia’s Cathedral floodlit beyond. In the distance, a myriad of lights, shapes, blocks. It seemed like we had the whole of the terrace to ourselves, and perhaps even the city. All really was quiet outside, but my heart was beating.

I was in my element.

I found myself out on the terrace a second time, alone with my thoughts and a glass of lager, and I stood there in my polo shirt and jeans, the cold night air biting at me. Luke came out to check on me and we just stood, looking out, disbelieving that we were there, in Kiev, at that moment, with friends, with Chelsea. Luke is quite a traveller with both club and country and he visited Russia for two or three World Cup games last summer. He loves foreign fields. But we both agreed how wonderful this European club football can be.

We were mesmerized by it all. The view. The history. The architecture. The lights. The city. The night.

“A million sparking lights, a million sparking stars, a million sparking lives.”

We had heard that some other friends – Dave and Liam – were drinking in a pub called the “Just Beer Bar” and we jumped into two cabs and shot off into the guts of the city. Ten minutes later, we arrived, soon to be joined – quite by chance – by Alan and Gary and Lucio and Pete, in addition to Dave and Liam. We had lost Aroha and Luke on the way, but their places were taken with new recruits. By this time – around 11.30pm, and without food since a meal on the plane over France, we were getting slowly, or quickly, pissed and things were getting blurred, just like the photographs. This bar – quite quiet to be honest, and themed with a nod to Americana – was not far from the Olympic Stadium, and near to the others’ accommodation. It seemed that in Kiev the Chelsea support was either housed near the stadium or Independence Square. Three more bottles of beer were quaffed, but thank heavens we stayed clear of the shorts and shots.

Just after midnight, we hailed a cab and returned back to our apartment, just finding enough time to shovel a horrible cold meat baguette into our respective mouths at a stand in Independence Square.

It had been – undoubtedly – a fine evening.

We enjoyed a little lie-in on the day of the game, and chose a late breakfast in a Crimean restaurant. But I felt a little tired. I felt a little low. I wanted to get a second wind. We soon bumped into Charlotte and Paul, also from Somerset, on the walk to pick up match tickets at the Premier Palace Hotel on Pushinska Street, which was no more than a twenty-minute walk away. This gave us the chance of a leisurely stroll along the sweeping curve of the impressive Kreschtayk Street. We walked past protestors outside a governmental building. The architecture was stunning, surprisingly so. I expected everything to be bleaker, grubbier. We collected match tickets – so good to see Dog, with Cath, at his first European away in around eight seasons – and continued on. We had decided to walk to the stadium. At 1.30pm, we dived into another cellar bar – another one which was open all day and all night – called the “Fat Lion” bar. Bars were scarce in Kiev. But we did well to spot a few. Three beers were quaffed. I loved this bar. There were a few Kiev fans enjoying a pre-match meal. The beer was excellent. The barmaid was stunning. I had my second wind.

Around a corner, a craft ale bar in a building which resembled a potting shed. This was really quiet. The IPA was tough to stomach.

On we went. We dived into the third cellar bar of the trip, and chatted to a Kiev fan underneath a Ukrainian flag. This lager had an odd, soapy taste.

We reached the metro outside the stadium bang on 5pm, but struggled and then failed to spot Scott, Paul and the others. We spotted a local restaurant – so busy – and enjoyed a fantastic, cheap and tasty meal, washed down with a couple of varying lagers. The beer definitely tasted better the previous night in the first pub on Independence Square. Opposite us were three Dynamo fans, demolishing plates of food, glasses of lager and a bottle of vodka like their life depended on it.

“England?”

“Yes. Chelsea.”

“Ah. Chel – see – eh.”

One was wearing a scarf. He intimated that he was troubled why we were not wearing a Chelsea scarf.

I felt like replying “so we don’t get slapped by your fucking ultras, mate” but I suspect it would have been lost in translation.

Outside, the night had fallen and there were bustling crowds outside the metro stop. The temperature had only dropped slightly, thank heavens. I had previously had visions of a shivering night inside the concrete of the Olympic Stadium. We began walking towards the lights of the stadium, which was no more than a hundred yards away. In the shadows, we were lucky to bump into a few Chelsea including Leigh from Basingstoke. He quickly reminded us that – as per the Chelsea website instruction that I had clearly forgotten – we were to divert away from the immediate vicinity, past some restaurants, up a dimly lit hill and finally into a narrow walkway which was not signposted at all. It wasn’t a huge and frustrating diversion away from the ground as at Barcelona this time last season and although the authorities, I am sure, insisted on this approach was for our own benefit, it still seemed a risky walk. There were no police close by and there was the threat of “ambush” in the air. Thankfully we made it into the compound of the stadium. We soon spotted lots of familiar faces.

We were safe and among friends.

The Olympic Stadium – an expansive roof added over its two tiers in 2011 – hosted last season’s Champions League Final. It’s an impressive stadium. Its seats mirror the Ukrainian national colours; two shades of yellow, two shades of blues – plus one shade of white for contrast – and although there is a random placing of these colours, the bottom tier is predominantly yellow and the top tier is predominantly blue, mirroring the two bars of the national flag. It’s a pleasing look.

We picked a row and took our spots. We didn’t have as many as the one thousand two-hundred in Budapest. The younger element was missing. The figure of five-hundred or so from the UK seemed right. This was augmented by a few hundred supporters from Ukraine, Belarus and other nearby countries. These foreign fans could easily be spotted; these were the ones wearing Chelsea scarves and tops, waving flags, clambering onto the fences at the front of our enclosure and generally being far too happy.

The UK supporters stood, as is our wont, with our hands in our pockets, comparing pre-match drinking adventures and grumbling about everything within sight.

It’s our way.

It’s what we do well.

The stadium took ages to fill up. I severely doubted that it would be anywhere near its 70,000 capacity. In the ‘sixties, it held over 100,000.

The team news had come through earlier.

Arrizabalaga

Zappacosta – Rudiger – Christensen – Alonso

Kovacic

Kante – Loftus-Cheek

Willian – Giroud – Hudson-Odoi

Willian was the captain for the night.

It was, of course, pleasing to see our Ruben and our Callum in the starting line-up. I had forgotten what our Davide looked like.

The teams came on, and our kit mirrored that of the stadium seats, but blue down below and yellow up top.

It was clear that the Kiev ultras were facing us at the opposite end, to the right of the access tunnel. They formed a dark and densely-packed mob, easily distinguishable from the rest of the home spectators. As the teams walked onto the pitch to the sound of the Europa League anthem (titled “Thursday Night Ersatz”) the ultras hoisted mosaics which formed an amalgam of the Ukranian flag and their club colours.

I was in a row alongside PD and Parky, then Lucy and Gary, Aroha and Luke, with Paul and Spencer from Swindon a few rows in front. Behind us, Scott and Paul. To my left, Kev, Tom and Russell. Alan, Gary and Raymondo a few rows behind. Other faces dotted around.

Chelsea in Kiev.

The game began.

There were a few Chelsea songs to mark the start of the match. Luke led the way with a barrage of ditties.

The home team – playing in all white for this one – attacked early but we coped with the danger. Over in the “north curve” a selection of eight or nine flags was waved with gusto, including a subtle black and white image of that man Lobanovskyi.

On just five minutes, we won a corner on our right. Willian struck the ball into the heart of our box, Ruben headed the ball on – and crucially down – into a few spare feet of space in front of the goal for Olivier Giroud to easily readjust his feet and guide the ball past Boyko.

I screamed with pleasure, the tie was safe now.

Dynamo Kiev 0 Chelsea 1

Not long after, Ruben wriggled in from the left after a fine series of passes but his daisy-cutter was palmed away by the Kiev ‘keeper.

To our right, above us in the home section, we spotted a few locals wearing the red, white and black bar scarves of Manchester United. A banner was quickly hoisted but I was not quick enough to spot the wording before it was forced to retire. A small United flag stayed throughout the match.

“Bit pathetic, that” I thought.

Behind me there was a running gag with Scott.

“We need one more. We’ll be safe if we get to five-nil on aggregate.”

“Yeah, they’d have to score six.”

Smiles.

Scott had met up with a few other Chelsea at a restaurant just around the corner from us. He had enjoyed a lovely rib eye. I told him that I had opted for a Chicken Kiev.

“Oh, and I had some borscht for a starter. Very nice. Only trouble was, I had to queue up for it for two hours.”

We controlled the game. The Chelsea songs came and went. Thankfully the temperature was fine and this was no bitter night in Kiev. A few crosses into their box tested their ‘keeper who was already having a busy game. They had a free-kick which didn’t cause us any harm. A break on their left ended up with a shot being placed past Kepa by Garmash but the Kiev player was clearly offside as the ball was played.

Next up from the ultras was a show of colour with hundreds of blue and white scarves held up over heads, and very effective it was too. I was surprised that there were no flares on display, but they were determined to put on a good show for us despite trailing heavily.

I thought to myself : “Fair play. That’s the embodiment of support. Making a racket. Making some noise. Always.”

On the half-hour, Ruben withstood some challenges and played the ball forward from deep to a raiding Alonso. With the entire defensive back-line backing off, the left-back slipped in a perfect ball into the path of Giroud who had an easy one-touch finish.

Dinamo Kiev 0 Chelsea 2

“Still need one more. They’ll need to score seven, then.”

A fine clipped corner from Willian found a leaping Giroud at the near post but his header was over. It could, and perhaps should, have been a perfect first-half hat-trick…left foot, right foot, header. Just before the half-time whistle, another fine move allowed Callum to race onto a fine through ball from Giroud to set up Alonso from close-in.

Dinamo Kyiv 0 Chelsea 3.

It had been a perfect first-half. The home team had been so poor, though. They just could not cope with our movement. And they looked so rusty. But the running gag continued.

“We still need another. I can see them getting eight.”

A few Chelsea left at half-time.

Answers on a postcard please.

Kiev had us all in stitches early into the second-half when Sydorchuk followed up Kepa’s fine save from himself with a rushed effort against the post with the whole goal gaping. Immediately after, another offside decision ruled out another Garmash goal.

“Bloody hell, they’re crap.”

As the hour approached, I spotted clusters of white lights in the home areas. Phone torches had been turned on.

“What’s this, a bloody Barry Manilow concert?”

The lights lit up most of the home areas, although I admired the fact that the solemn block of three-thousand ultras did not participate.

“Good on them.”

I noted that several half-hearted attempts from the home fans above us to instigate a “wave” didn’t ever materialise. This crowd were clearly split into two. The ultras and the rest. But although parts of the home support were visually impressive, there was not great booms of noise. No thunderous racket. It was no Istanbul. To be honest, the single chant of “Dee-nah-moh” was rather meek.

With the torch lights still on, Willian waited to take a free-kick down below us in the corner. His fantastic cross was met with a magnificent header from Giroud. There was his perfect hat-trick.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

D KNIB 0 Chelsea 4.

Although, it has to be said, the marking was again non-existent. I reckoned that half the defence had buggered off to start queuing up for some beetroot soup. A swipe from the foot of Alonso at a free-kick forced a magnificent save, arching back, by the overworked ‘keeper Boyko. Next up from the ultras was something that Leeds United used to do at half-time around fifteen years ago; the stripping off of shirts and jackets. Over in the far quadrant, there were several hundred skins.

I pictured an image of David Brent : “Ooh. You’re hard.”

Jorginho came on for Kante.

Dave came on for an injured Davide.

Pedro replaced Willian, who handed the armband to Captain Dave.

On seventy-eight minutes, a lovely through-ball from Giroud played in Callum, who raced through and calmly slotted past the hapless Boyko.

Chickens 0 Lions 5

Scott tapped me on the shoulder.

“That’s it. We’re safe. They won’t score nine.”

The joke had run its course and so had the tie.

Chelsea 3 Dynamo Kiev 0.

Dynamo Kiev 0 Chelsea 5.

This was my biggest ever away win in Europe.

It had worked out at 30p per goal.

Bargain.

The gate was announced as a very healthy 64,830. And the vast majority stayed until the end. At the final whistle, the Kiev ultras were still holding their scarves aloft. They had provided us with quite a show. Our players walked over towards us, with Olivier Giroud clutching the match ball. To be honest, we had never really moved out of second gear the entire night. Kovacic and Willian had done well. Giroud had scored three nice goals. It was as easy a night in Europe as we have ever had. We applauded them, and they applauded us.

As we waited for around twenty minutes or so for the home legions to be cleared, I admitted to anyone that might be listening “the trouble is, we haven’t honestly played anyone in this thing yet.”

The boisterous foreign fans – Chelsea Ukraine scarves, Chelsea Belarus flags – then began to serenade each other with the “Chelsea Alouette” and caused the UK fans to giggle. You had to admire their passion.

I was one of the very last supporters to leave the entire stadium. I had gone down to take some shots of the empty bowl from the bottom of our section. It was still a mild night. I slowly walked to the top of the away section, and I was the very last Chelsea fan to leave. As I walked out of the gates, around fifty police walked with me, their employment for the night over.

That’s what I call a police escort.

I bought a cheap Dynamo fridge magnet from a cheery local woman out on the main approach. I was certainly surprised how relatively empty the streets were. Certainly all other Chelsea had disappeared into the night.

It did not take long for the three of us to hail a cab and head back towards Independence Square.

In the last match report, the home game with the Wanderers of Wolverhampton, I had mentioned “Sliding Doors” which had begun with a scene or two at the old Fulham Broadway tube station.

Intrigued?

The cab driver asked for our destination.

I remembered that I had slipped a map of Kiev, picked up at the Chelsea ticket collection point, into my back pocket. I retrieved it and pointed to Independence Square.

“Ah. Maidan.”

This was the local name. We sped through the city and were deposited right outside our apartment. It was only a five-minute drive. As soon as we set foot on the pavement, a couple of Hungarian Chelsea fans walked past us and, soon realising that we were Chelsea, and from England, told us that they were headed to a pub called “O’Briens.” I had remembered this pub from a chat that I had had with our main client in Ukraine who, at one stage, was keen to meet up with us on our stay. Keen to visit as many bars as possible during our stay, we followed them up the hill. It was only a five-minute walk. The pub was surprisingly quiet. I am not a huge fan of Irish pubs – apart from in Ireland – but this one was passable. The barman spoke great English and we enjoyed a relaxing hour or so.

The Hungarian fans, from the lovely city of Budapest – this season’s Europa League adventure keeps looping back on itself – were good company. Two lads, two girls, though not couples. Just in Kiev for the Chelsea. They were just amazed how cheap everything was in Kiev.  I told them how much we had enjoyed their city in December. Also in the pub, quite randomly, were two Slavia Prague fans, this time a couple, and the bloke laughed about how he wanted to visit London in the next round, but his girlfriend was not keen on the idea. There was a little banter between the people from Prague and Budapest – local histories, rivalries – and the three of us from Somerset and Wiltshire just sat back, bemused.

“Another pint?

At around 1am, we left the pub – “see you in the next round” – and walked back down to our digs. On the corner of the square, right outside the “Copper Pub” we spotted a few police.

There was nothing to see really, so we turned in.

It had been a fantastic end to a very fine day.

The cab driver asked for our destination.

I uttered the words “Independence Square.”

He looked blankly at me. I looked blankly at him. I needed to bring my geographical skills into operation. I had a pretty good notion of which way we needed to go, so I pointed ahead. At a junction, quite close to the “Fat Lion”, I inadvertently chose the wrong road. For around ten minutes, we veered slightly away from where I knew we needed to be headed and we ended up taking a few more wrong turns. We found ourselves up on the high area to the east of Independence Square, but we eventually reached a little area off Kreschtayk Street. We slowly walked under the still busy road, using the eerie underpass, and made our way up to our apartment. We looked at the “Copper Bar” and uttered the words “nightcap”. At the top of the stairs, I spotted a few security staff. Inside, the bar was a mix of Chelsea and a few locals. We sat at the bar, and ordered more “1715.” A Chelsea fan then stunned us with the words “there’s fifty of them up in the square.” I found this hard to believe as we had seen no Kiev fans anywhere since we had left the stadium. On our gentle stroll through Independence Square, there had been no Kiev fans, hooligans or ultras waiting in shadows or anywhere else. I dismissed it as a silly rumour.

Ten minutes later, there was a commotion in the other bar – more a walkway – and then around six or seven Dynamo Kiev fans appeared in our bar, no more than four yards away. I remained calm, but inside my head was spinning. How many were upstairs and on their way in? Did they have weapons? Was this going to be a horrible repeat of 2015? Their main man, horrible eyes, a grin on his face, looked around. He shouted.

“Hooligans!”

He was flanked by mere kids. He threw something across the bar, hitting one or two. There was a commotion, a rush of bodies. The sound of glasses being smashed. The Kiev fans were chased out. Parky, PD and I had not moved from the bar. It was all over within a few seconds.

We remained in the bar, calmed each other, and others, and finished our drinks. At around 1am we called it a day. Outside the pub, thankfully we spotted a few police.

There was nothing to see really, so we turned in.

It had been a very odd end to a very fine day.

Friday was a day of rest, relaxation, a little sightseeing, a few more beers, and then some more beers. We had another lie in, and breakfasted locally at a Parisian-style restaurant. The food, and coffees – much needed – were superb. The three of us headed over to check out the Dynamo stadium, and in the ten-minute walk, using the underpass again, we soon spotted memorials to locals who had fallen during the demonstrations and battles of Maidan in 2014. Images were etched onto stone. There were flowers. Some of the fallen were young. On a few occasions we noticed the painted outlines of bodies, marking the location of where innocent people were gunned down by the army as they protested the Ukrainian’s prime minister’s wishes to become closer to Russia. It was a cold and sobering moment.

The stadium, glistening in the late-morning sun, improved the mood a little. I loved the pillars, the iconic “D” of the Dynamo badge, the magical statue of Lobanovskyi – on his bench – looking over at Independence Square.

A penny for his thoughts.

Alas, we couldn’t enter the stadium, but we walked up a leafy walkway and I was able to take a few panoramic photographs. The floodlights were pure Eastern Bloc. The trees added a natural touch. The blue of the seats were so vivid. It was a stunning setting for a football stadium. I am pleased that the club still regard it as its base.

I continued a walk through the immediate area, then met up at the “Copper Bar.” We soon learnt that we were to play Slavia Prague in the quarter finals. We decided to give it a miss, then hope for Benfica – cheap flights from Bristol – rather than Frankfurt. Although from memory, that stadium is nicely nestled in some woods too. Either city would be a joy.

I left the boys to some more drinking as I headed up to the historic area of the Golden Gate, St. Sophia’s and St. Michael’s. I took plenty of photographs and I lost myself for an hour and a half, away from the madding crowd, away from the beers, and I enjoyed every second of it. On returning to the bar at about 5pm, the Bristol lot – Julie, Tim, Kev, Brian, Pete and Sam – had dropped in. This was their third visit to Kiev, after a flying visit en route to Donetsk in 2012 and again in 2015. Tim tellingly reported that there was devastation around Maidan / Independence Square on the second visit, with evidence of buildings being fire damaged. The area has certainly seen some action over the past few years.

Later that night, with the other two returning to the apartment early, I had the whole night to myself. There were a few beers in “Blues Bar” with a local duo playing some fine music. When they heard I was from London, they wanted to take a selfie with me. I found that odd, but touching. I returned to “B Hush” for a few more beers and some lovely food.  I was alone with my thoughts once again.

The night continued on.

Kiev had been a wonderful host city.

I would return in a heartbeat.