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 St. George’s Day

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Chris Axon

Arsenal vs. Chelsea : 23 April 2024.

I was up early, around 4.45am, with yet another long day ahead. As I pottered about the house in a semi-conscious state, for some reason I kept thinking of that ridiculously chirpy – certainly for 5am on a week-day morning – Arsenal ditty that goes on about “playing football the Arsenal way.” I wasn’t sure why this was; some nervous reaction, maybe. But I soon adapted this to make it very specific to the particular date of the game.

“Playing football the Arsenal way. Thrashed by Chelsea on St. George’s Day.”

It scanned OK. I put it in my metaphorical back pocket to use on social media, hopefully later in the day. Then, with work started at 6am, the little ditty occasionally floated back into my mind. For some unfathomable reason, I shared it during the day in the office with Matt, the Arsenal supporter, and how he didn’t ridicule me is a miracle.

Oh God. What was I thinking off? Hardly any Chelsea fans had much hope of us winning at the Emirates Stadium later that evening.

Despite a slow but gradual upturn in our league form over the past eight games – four wins and four draws – this was always going to be the toughest of games, and the fixture loomed over us for weeks after the initial date of 16 March was set aside for an FA Cup game.

After the narrow defeat at Wembley on Saturday, the three of us were philosophical as we made a record-breaking exit from the national stadium, the quickest-ever escape from our seat at full-time to Marylebone and then to my car at Barons Court.

“I’m not losing any sleep about losing 1-0 to City today. We did OK. We should have won it.”

The Arsenal away game quickly followed on the Tuesday night. It was the first of seven remaining league games.

Arsenal – away.

Aston Villa – away.

Tottenham Hotspur – home.

West Ham United – home.

Nottingham Forest – away.

Brighton & Hove Albion – away.

Bournemouth – home.

Despite our upturn in form, and expectations, this was a tough run-in, and if I was honest, I didn’t fancy us to win more than a couple. West Ham at home, and then? I struggled to name a second game. Bournemouth at home? Maybe.

Only PD and I travelled up from Somerset for this game. We were parked at Barons Court again, bang on 5pm, and our pre-match pre-amble took in a coffee at a café outside the station, before hopping on to the Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus, where we dropped off for a drink at “The Queens Head” before returning to the tube network and alighting at Arsenal. The tube carriage was full of Arsenal on the last stretch. I saw a young kid with a Chelsea shirt peeking out from underneath a jacket and nodded.

The usual slow walk up the claustrophobic slope at Arsenal tube and then out into the early evening sun, blinking at the brightness. Here, I wanted to time travel.

I turned left, and I visited the past.

I walked along Gillespie Road, with its brown-bricked terraced houses, with neatly-painted doors and window frames, that have stood since before the days of Woolwich Arsenal’s abandonment of its south-side beginnings and its sudden arrival at Highbury in 1913. I like the fact that this little stretch of terra firma is still utilised on Arsenal match days. There are food huts and merchandise stalls, many utilising the concreted front gardens along Gillespie Road and it is a hive of activity. The place is a riot of colour, albeit the wrong colour. I was undoubtedly reminded of my first-ever visit to Highbury in August 1984, almost forty years ago. I trudged past the void that used to lead to the old North Bank, and then turned up the slight incline of Avenell Road. My camera went into overdrive as I photographed the splendour of the art deco façade of the imposing East Stand. It is such an impressive sight. Memories of 1984, and paying at the turnstile to get into the Clock End with around 16,000 other Chelsea supporters on that blisteringly hot day in the greatest of our collective summers.

In 1984, Chelsea were back. And how.

There were memories of sitting in the sauna-like conditions of the top tier of the Clock End for the Wimbledon game in 1997 too. Believe it or not, that was my only Chelsea win at Highbury. There were eight visits with Chelsea against Arsenal, but only four draws and four losses. I used to hate them singing to us about winning the league in black and white. Sadly, I did not get a ticket for the Champions League game in 2004.

1984 and 2004, forty years ago and twenty years ago, time travel indeed.

I walked past the Arsenal tube station once again.

I was back in the present, like a modern day Mr. Benn. We slid past the site of the entrance to the old West Stand on Highbury Hill – shoe-horned between houses – and then a left-turn and onto Drayton Park. More merchandise stalls, more red. A few boisterous shouts from supporters of both teams. The modern buildings of an Arsenal ticket office to my right, then the slow walk up to the wide open approach to the new stadium.

My mind had allowed me to wallow in the past, and it was now to check out the present.

To the left, brick terraced houses, 1930’s architecture, Alex James in baggy shorts and Herbert Chapman busts in the marble halls.

To the right, glass and steel, the new stadium, towering stands, nearby high-rise apartments, but also a nod to the past too, a statue of Herbert Chapman in quiet admiration of the new home.

Outside, I handed over tickets to Ray, and one of his mates took a photo of us.

PD, Chris and Ray with Herbert in the background.

There was a gaggle of worried Chelsea fans nearby; JD with Jayne and Liz, plus Neil Barnett.

“Have you seen the team?”

I had, and the concern was the defence.

Petrovic

Gilchrist – Disasi – Badiashile – Cucarella

Caicedo – Enzo

Madueke – Gallagher – Mudryk

Jackson

The focus was on the central-pairing of Axel Disasi and Benoit Badiashile. Yes, I was worried. I quickly glimpsed at reactions to the team on social media. There was concern that Thiago Silva, who had performed admirably at Wembley on Saturday, had been dropped. I had a wry grin to myself as I remembered how the social media experts had decided a month or so ago that Silva should be dropped from the Chelsea team and told to gracefully retire.

Maybe the old guy was carrying a knock, maybe he wasn’t at a 100%. The dropping of Trevoh Chalobah was a little more mystifying.

But no Malo Gusto and no Cole Palmer. Gulp.

I made my way in past the security checks – I didn’t fancy risking the SLR again, my small Sony “pub camera” would have to suffice – and hoped for the best with the Disasi and Badiashile pairing. It’s probable that our first-choice at the back in a flat-four, should they ever be fit at the same time, would have been Levi Colwill and Wesley Fofana this season. Fofana doesn’t even feel like a Chelsea player at the moment, such has been his enforced absence. Will we ever see him again?

I was inside at 7.30pm, a bitter wind suddenly providing surprising gusts of cold. My seat was right next to the wide exit adjacent to the corner flag. It provided me with an interrupted view of the Clock End goal, which I quickly decided may not be for the best.

Five of us in a row : Alan, John, Gary, PD, me.

I spotted some faces around and about.

The PA warned about consistent standing, and reminded us to be aware of who we might be standing next to and that some spectators are not able to stand.

“And I can’t stand Arsenal.”

Just before the teams came onto the pitch, Joe Cole and Rio Ferdinand, on “Sky TV” duty, walked behind the goal from a previous position and headed right past me and into the guts of the Clock End using the exit tunnel. Joe Cole was serenaded by us all and he reciprocated by hugging a couple of Chelsea supporters. The Arsenal match mascot – Gunnersaurus – appeared fleetingly too, disappearing into the same void as the former players.

Long neck, small head, a gormless expression, big feet, clumsy, probably a very small brain.

But that’s enough about Rio Ferdinand.

A little music; “Hells Bells” by AC/DC and “London Calling” by The Clash.

Piped music, music for the fans, not songs by the fans, then flags on the pitch and flames alongside it. The modern football package. I bet Herbert Chapman would have hated it.

I noted that Kai Havertz, keeping his number 29 shirt, was starting for the home team.

All along, in the car, in the pub, all of the pre-match, I had mentioned that I wanted us to keep them out for twenty minutes.

They attacked us in the Clock End in the first-half. And they attacked us early. Firstly, Havertz went sprawling in the box after the most negligible of challenges from Badiashile. He was offside anyway.

However, in what seemed the next worthwhile attack, Declan Rice ran deep into our box. Alfie Gilchrist was exposed, and had two Arsenal players to occupy his mind. Rice passed it to his left to Leandro Trossard, who seemed within touching distance of us in the front few rows. I expected a cross. Maybe Djordje Petrovic did too. Trossard whipped the ball towards the goal and I, and no doubt Petrovic, grimaced when the net rippled.

Oh, for fuck sake.

Arsenal 1 Chelsea 0.

Just four minutes had elapsed.

The home team absolutely dominated the opening quarter of the game, and we were run ragged. Bukayo Saka impressed me. A fine save down low from Petrovic foiled Havertz. It was only a miraculous selection of last-minute blocks, lucky deflections, wayward Arsenal efforts, and great reaction saves from Petrovic that stopped Arsenal from going further ahead. There appeared to be hardly a seat not being used on this cold night in N5 and the home crowd, still believing that the title race was on, were baying for blood.

Then, almost inextricably, we began to improve. We won loose balls – “turnovers” in modern parlance, is this a fucking baking competition? – and hinted that we might be able to get behind Arsenal. Madueke, hardly flavour of the month at Chelsea these days, received lots of the ball but struggled to produce an end product. Half-way through the first-half, a scintillating run by the similarly chastised Nicolas Jackson up the left touchline had me gasping. I could hardly believe my eyes. His pace was spellbinding. I remembered a similar run at Villa in the FA Cup replay by Madueke on the other flank. In the end, his cross from the goal-line struck the post after deflecting off Gabriel.

The place was noisy. There were the usual Arsenal dirges, but Chelsea tried to quell their racket.

“We won 4-1 in Baku.”

Arsenal came again, a fine save down low from Petrovic foiled Havertz. Then, a deflected shot off a Chelsea defender happened to hit Petrovic who was well-placed.

I loved the way that Alfie Gilchrist took out an Arsenal player on the touchline. It brought back memories of how Doug Rougvie marked his debut by taking out Viv Anderson at Highbury in 1984.

We managed to put together a few attacks, with Enzo Fernandez occasionally playing the ball intelligently forward. Crosses came into the Arsenal box but oh for a target man. And how we missed the intelligence of Palmer, tucked in behind. When we reached the final third, we just seemed to run out of ideas.

We closed the first-half reasonably well. A shot on target from Marc Cucarella came out to Enzo who drilled a shot just wide.

At the break, I tried to be as up-beat as I could. I think I knew, deep down, that it could have been more than 0-1.

Elsewhere, down in deepest Devon, Frome Town’s promotion rivals Wimborne Town were at AFC Tavistock in a match that they had to win to guarantee the league title and automatic promotion. If that was achieved, Frome Town would be forced into the play-offs. It was 1-1 at half-time.

The match began again with Chelsea attacking us in the Clock End. The initial action was at the other end, though. Petrovic was called into action early, and saved well from a Havertz poke, but on fifty-two minutes, the ball stayed alive from an Arsenal corner and Ben White smashed a loose ball in.

Arsenal 2 Chelsea 0.

Worse was to follow. Five minutes later and a rapid Arsenal break. The impressive Martin Odergaard slotted a perfect ball for Havertz to run onto, with Cucarella and Badiashile chasing his shadow. The former Chelsea player smashed the ball high over Petrovic and into the goal.

Arsenal 3 Chelsea 0.

Lots of Chelsea left.

Madueke set up Jackson inside the box, but chose to go for the near post than the far. The side netting rippled and we spat out some vitriol.

On sixty-four minutes, Saka passed inside the box to Havertz, who took the briefest of touches before drilling the ball in off the post. I saw the number “29” on his shirt as he ran towards the North Bank and glowered.

Arsenal 4 Chelsea 0.

I had visions of a huge defeat. I wanted us to stop the bleeding.

Time for two substitutions.

Raheem Sterling for Mudryk, as yet un-mentioned in this match report.

Trevoh Chalobah for Enzo.

On seventy minutes, a hideous moment. One touch football; Saka to Odergaard, a chip to White, and a ridiculous lob over Petrovic into the goal. It reminded me of that blooter that Tony Adams scored at the Highbury Clock End in 1998, the git. I hope that it won’t coincide with another Arsenal league title.

Arsenal 5 Chelsea 0.

Oh God, no more. Please.

Thinking : “we beat them 6-0 in 2014, ten years ago, please not six.”

This was horrible. The stadium was as noisy as I have ever heard it.

“We’re the North Bank, we’re the North Bank, we’re the North Bank Highbury.”

“We’re the Clock End, we’re the Clock End, we’re the Clock End Highbury.”

More substitutions.

Thiago Silva for Gilchrist.

Cesare Casadei for Madueke.

It was around this time, around 9.30pm, with more and more Chelsea vacating the away end, that I solidly stood against the wall to my left, not really paying too much attention to the game, and started to search for updates from Devon.

Tavistock were 2-1 up. Get in.

But then, bollocks, Wimborne had equalised with about six minutes to go.

The action on the pitch drifted on. Thank God Havertz had been substituted, but on came Jorginho. Stop twisting that knife, Arsenal.

I summoned up the courage to squint at the Wimborne Town Twitter feed, and there it was.

94 minutes : Tavistock 3 Wimborne Town 2.

My heart jumped. It soon became the final score.

What a mixture of emotions, though. I was hating the events at Arsenal in that horrible second-half. We just disappeared and wilted. Arsenal were well worth their win. I was just relieved that the home team didn’t go for the jugular.

The final nail in the coffin was Arsenal cheering every one of our passes in a late, late move that we put together.

Ugh.

With seven minutes of extra-time signalled, I asked PD if we should leave. We were the only ones left in our immediate area. From memory, I had only left early at a very small number of games in my Chelsea history. This was game 1,445.

The others?

Chelsea vs. Bolton, 1981 – to catch a coach at Earls Court at 5pm, we were 2-0 up.

Sunderland vs. Chelsea, 1999 – to beat the traffic, we were 1-4 down.

Manchester United vs. Chelsea, 2008 – to beat the traffic, we were 0-2 down, we lost 0-3.

West Ham vs. Chelsea, 2012 – I had had enough, post Di Matteo sacking, we were 1-2 down, we lost 1-3.

We trudged slowly up the steps. I must have looked pitiful.

I mouthed to a few good friends “I don’t like doing this.”

To be fair, PD has been suffering with his hip recently, and an elongated wait at Highbury & Islington tube would have been horrible. We walked down the Holloway Road as fast as we could. We reached there at 10.15pm. The Victoria Line to Green Park, then back onto the Piccadilly Line to Barons Court, getting back at just before 11pm. I would eventually get home at 1.30am.

I can’t deny it, the result in Devon had cheered me up no end. As I drove along the M4 and the A4, through those old towns, I could not help but to babble away to PD like a fool. To sum up, if Frome Town claim a win at home to Bristol Manor Farm on Saturday and Wimborne Town fail to win at Melksham Town, just sixteen miles away, Frome Town will be promoted.

Saturday 27 April promises to be a heavy day of football.

From Frome Town to Aston Villa.

I can’t bloody wait.

Tales From The SW6 Derby

Posted on February 5, 2023 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Fulham : 3 February 2023.

There was an air of anticipation bordering on excitement – but only just, I am fifty-seven after all – as we made our way up to London for the SW6 derby at Stamford Bridge. Who on Earth could have possibly forecasted such a big transfer spend-up during the winter transfer window? Certainly not me. The events of the previous few weeks had left many, including myself, in a whirl. We had already seen a few debuts in January but there would soon be more ahead. Players – the majority of whom were new names to me – were joining Chelsea Football Club at a rate of knots not seen since the transfer flurry in 2003 when we plundered the market for Glen Johnson, Adrian Mutu, Damian Duff, Hernan Crespo, Juan Sebastian Veron, Geremi, Wayne Bridge and Claude Makelele.

I had heard of all of them.

The signings of 2003, twenty-years on, were a different ball game.

Did it all make sense? Again, who knows? It may take a while, and the test of time, to evaluate if the massive financial outlay on players will have been a success.

Into the future we go.

But first, let’s take a look back at two games that are on the schedule for revisiting from forty years ago.

Saturday 22 January 1983 : Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 Chelsea 1 – 19,533

After the surprising 6-0 win against Cambridge United at Stamford Bridge, a week later we were on our travels. We were up against promotion hopefuls Wolves at Molyneux. This game drew a very healthy 19,533, although not as many as the recent 22,567 for the visit of Leeds United to the Black Country. These were decent gates for the time; excellent, in fact, for the Second Division and actually pretty decent when compared to First Division attendances that season. On the same day that we visited Wolves, just 9,946 saw Coventry City play Swansea City and 9,718 saw Notts County entertain Arsenal in the top flight.

Wolves’ famous old stadium was in a state of flux in those days. A massive ground redevelopment had stalled and it meant that, due to the eventual planned movement of the pitch, the one completed stand stood around fifty yards away from the nearest touchline. The huge South Bank still stood, as did the cranked main stand and the covered enclosure at the north side, and it looked altogether ridiculous. Molyneux was eventually completed in around 1993. In 2023, the once distant stand is the only structure remaining, and in fact the north enclosure has been replaced not once but twice.

I am sure that I wasn’t expecting the goal rush of the previous weekend to continue and Chelsea didn’t let me down, losing 1-2 with Colin Pates the lone scorer. That evening, I moped around Frome with some school friends, from an eighteenth birthday party to a variety of local hostelries. I suspect that the trials and tribulations of Chelsea Football Club was not high on my list of conversation topics.

On the same day, Derby County drew 3-3 at the Baseball Ground against Leeds United in front of 17,005. The main story of that game, though, involved the hooligan element of the travelling support who detached many of the seats in the away stand, the Osmaston Stand, and launched them at anyone within range. Why do I mention this? On the following Saturday, Chelsea were to play at the Baseball Ground in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

The song lyrics “anything you can do, I can do better” were surely ringing in the ears of Chelsea’s support on the way home from Molyneux that evening.

Saturday 29 January 1983 : Derby County 2 Chelsea 1 – 23,383

I had high hopes for this cup tie. I was absolutely sure that we would ease past Derby County, who were not enjoying a great season themselves, and we would then then be handed a plumb home draw in the next round. For some days, I was convinced we’d get Manchester United, the team supported by Rachel, the girl that had briefly appeared in my life before Christmas and who was still the object of my unrequited affections. From forty years on, this seems all rather pathetic and I suppose it was. But at the time communication between the two of us was minimal at best – I was an expert of furtive glances and occasional smiles, which I am pleased to report were always reciprocated when we passed each other – but a Chelsea vs. Manchester United cup tie would have definitely, I was sure, got us talking.

The lure of the FA Cup managed to entice large numbers to the Baseball Ground on this Saturday forty years ago and this was typical of the era. Derby’s league average for the whole season would eventually be 13,601 – there were only 8,075 present for our visit in the September – yet this tie drew almost 10,000 more. These were big numbers. Of the 23,383 present – I was not there – it is highly likely that Chelsea would have taken over 6,000.

The Baseball Ground, cramped twixt terraced streets, factories and industrial units, was a classic football stadium, famous for its ridiculously muddy pitches and tight stands. There were double-deck structures at each end, and the stands did not run parallel to the pitch.

Sadly, Kevin Wilson gave the home team a 1-0 lead in the first-half, but Mike Fillery equalised with twelve minutes to go. Alas, Wilson – who would sign for Chelsea in 1987 – grabbed a very late winner. And, yes dear reader, a sub-section of the Chelsea support dutifully copied their Leeds counterparts the previous week by lobbing seats everywhere, even on top of fellow Chelsea supporters on the terrace below if I am not mistaken.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

There is no doubt, no doubt at all, that in 1982/83 Chelsea Football Club was more famous, or infamous, for its hooligan support than its football. This was an altogether strange thing for me to have to handle, especially being so distant from the club geographically, and so distant from the heartbeat of the club, and fellow fans. It was a lonely existence to be honest. There was, of course, in the warped logic of a school playground or sixth-form common room, some sort of badge-of-honour kudos in Chelsea’s reputation, but at the same time I longed for us to get back into the top flight again.

1982/83 was turning into a desperate campaign, a nightmare in fact.

Oh, and guess what? I was to learn on the following Monday that Derby would play Manchester United at home in the fifth round.

Fackinell.

Let’s hop forward forty-years. I was up at the stadium just before 5pm. There was a little time to kill, so I took a few photos underneath the old Shed Wall, which can be one of Stamford Bridge’s most photogenic areas. I found myself by the repositioned photo of Gianluca Vialli, and touched his left boot for luck and in memory of the great man.

I had already seen on various social media platforms that Chelsea would be celebrating the Chinese New Year for the game against Fuham and I had to wonder why. The players would be – wait for it – wearing special pre-game training tops honouring the year of the rabbit, and as I walked around outside a couple of stands, red Chinese lanterns were regularly positioned. It was all very odd and rather pathetic.

Why were we honouring the Chinese New Year? Is it now a big thing among sports clubs the world over? I must have missed that memo. Let’s just thank our stars that American Independence Day is in the summer. What about South Korea? What about Venezuela? What about Rwanda? Will they get their moments too? I know we are a global brand – ugh – now, blah, blah, blah, but it left me cold. I wondered if we will soon be honouring other important dates in the calendar. What about the onset of Lent for starters and, specifically, Pancake Day?

Yes, Pancake Day. I had an idea. Chelsea should market supporters’ shirts for our next home game against Southampton with the words “I’m with this tosser” on the front. Someone contact the marketing department pronto.

As I left the West Stand forecourt, a Chelsea steward was going into a frenzy, yelling out “bag search on the table, bag search on the table” as if his life depended on it. I looked back one last time and saw a mass of hi-viz tabard-wearing stewards standing in a regulated formation – maybe a 7/5/3 with pushed-on wing-backs – and I wondered if our team against Fulham might be sporting a similarly over-loaded formation to get everyone a game.

I walked down the Fulham Road towards the CFCUK stall. Mark Worrall had put aside a book for me – “Come Along And Sing this Song” – which is an old-style football annual type book detailing 1983/84 (which I covered during the 2008/2009 season here) and looks a fine tome. I took a photo of the “Broadway Bar and Grill” – formerly the “King’s Head” and then “The Slug and Lettuce” – which, despite being a very handy pub at Chelsea, I have only ever entered a few times. There was a buzz that you don’t often get on match days. The signings had certainly energised the Chelsea support.

Pre-match was spent in “Simmon’s” with Parky, Andy and Sophie from Nuneaton, but also some friends from California; Tim and Hooman, who I had met on a number of occasions before. A surprise guest was BJ from Dallas who I last bumped into over in Michigan in 2016. It was a joy to see him again. He was with Emily, originally from Missouri but now living in Dallas too. We had a decent natter. It was her first visit to Stamford Bridge. She received the usual “if we lose, you’re not coming back” welcome from me. There was talk of the upcoming trip to Dortmund – not long to go now – but I also mentioned the home tie. I had recoiled in horror when I recently read that West Upper tickets for that game are on sale for £240.

Yes, that’s correct, £240.

What was that about the normal working man being priced out of football? At this rate, even the well-off are being priced out.

“A family day out at the football? That’ll be a thousand pounds please, thanks, enjoy your pizza.”

We checked the team on Sophie’s ‘phone.

“Ziyech playing? What? The fucker was meant to be in Paris, sipping champagne and smoking Gitanes tonight.”

I immediately wondered why Enzo Fernandez was not playing. But I then spotted, with some relief, that his name was given as simply “Enzo.”

He was to take Jorginho’s number five shirt.

It was great to see Reece James back.

“Hopefully not too soon though, eh?”

Andy was excited about the game. And although I was too – something I thought I’d not be saying a few weeks back, maybe after Forest – I couldn’t help but say that, knowing Chelsea, it would be a 0-0 draw, “another false dawn.”

Andy gave me a very old-fashioned look before we then dived headlong into a chat into our shared Chelsea past and memories of Bolton 2005, Munich 2012 and Porto 2021.

I was in early. I had a quick chat with Oxford Frank – “not sure about the morals of all this, but I guess it’s not our money…well, it will be our money when our season tickets undoubtedly go up next season” – and a young lad behind me from Ukraine, draped in a yellow and blue flag, bless him.

The troops arrived. The ground slowly filled.

There was a montage of Dave on the front cover of the programme having recently totted-up his five-hundredth game for our beloved club. I checked the spelling of a couple of our new acquisitions then quickly forgot them. Noni Madueke was going to be a struggle for sure. It annoys me that attendances are nowhere to be seen in this season’s match programme. They don’t always appear in newspapers. It is a pet peeve that seems to have developed since the COVID seasons. I don’t get it. It wasn’t so long ago that Chelsea used to add away team’s numbers to all games too. Is it me being cynical in thinking that by not publicising attendances, the myth of all games being sell-outs continues unabated?

A little more history about the SW6 Derby.

This would be the forty-fifth Chelsea vs. Fulham game at Stamford Bridge in all competitions – League, FA Cup, League Cup, Anglo-Scottish Cup – since our first encounter in 1911. In the previous forty-four, Chelsea had suffered just two defeats. No wonder Fulham hate us so much. Of course, we are so ambivalent to them. So much so that they hate it.

Despite our close proximity, a little under two miles between the two stadia, there simply hasn’t been any notable tit-for-tat rivalry on the pitch. Our lack of matches against Fulham in our formative decades is the main reason. Of those previous forty-four games, only twenty-two took place from 1905 to 2001. If anything, the rivalry has only ratcheted up in recent years, with the other sixteen games having taken place since 2001.

Is this, then, a new rivalry, having been dormant for over a century?

Possibly.

It wasn’t so long ago that the quiet neighbours were a main stay in the Premier League. Fulham enjoyed thirteen straight seasons in the top flight from 2001/2002 to 2013/14. There was a time, with them floundering in the basement, that I wondered if Chelsea would ever enjoy a local league derby ever again. I can remember the joy of March 2002 – it seems odd to admit this now – when I saw a derby against Fulham for the first time in eighteen years…a decent game, a narrow 3-2 win, a good atmosphere.

The team? OK, here we go.

Kepa

James – Silva – Badiashile – Cucarella

Gallagher – Enzo

Ziyech – Mount – Mudryk

Havertz

It almost felt like a new beginning.

Back in December, during that shite break, the names Benoit Badiashile, Enzo Fernandez – I did not watch any of the World Cup remember – and Mychailo Mudryk existed in another world.

Certainly not in London SW6.

Pre-game, two crowd-surfing tributes to Reece James dominated the two ends. It was a nicely-timed “welcome back” to our much-admired right back. There was also an odd, awkward, moment when the PA asked us to remember Jorginho, now passing sideways at Arsenal. I have never known that before. I don’t remember the PA asking us to remember Gordon Durie after he fucked off in 1991.

How odd.

Anyway, Jorginho. He had his moments. I never warmed to him particularly and his style was difficult to get excited about, but he put in some decent performances over the five years. We’ll miss the hop, skip and jump at penalties, eh?

“The Number 5 is dead, long live the Number 5.”

The game began. It was a mild night and I took my jacket off and placed it on a spare seat. Another full house, or near it. The pitch, parts of it, looked ropey, with it looking close to cutting up.

Immediately, I became flummoxed at the sight of us attacking the Matthew Harding and it took me a while to adapt.

I whispered to Clive “some team that, now…”

My eyes were soon settling on Mydryk and Enzo.

I now have two Argentinian friends in Buenos Aires – hello Victor, hello Vanesa – and we had been chatting about our new World Cup winner during the immediate pre-match. I like it that Enzo once played under Hernan Crespo at Defensa y Justicia, one of the city’s legion of professional clubs, and he reminded me a little, facially, of Juan Roman Riquelme. I have developed a little love affair with Argentina of late, and we have had a trickle of Argentine players since the madness of 2003. Apart from Veron, Crespo and now Enzo, Wily Caballero and Gonzalo Higuain have recently played for us. I also recollect the fleeting presence of Franco di Santo who I once saw score a goal for us in Dallas, the home of Emily and BJ.

The number five seemed to be playing quite deep, but I hoped he had a licence to roam.

Vamos Enzo!

After the first ten minutes, I had to admit that Fulham had probably started the livelier of the two teams despite a little activity down our flanks. Mydryk looked lively at the start but he certainly had no wide open spaces to exploit, like at Anfield, and he soon started to fade.

I soon spotted Emily and BJ down in Parkyville.

On nineteen minutes, our first real chance, and a super lob over the back line from Thiago Silva towards Kai Havertz, but his prod was stopped by Bernd Leno. The offside flag was raised anyway.

To Clive : “it’s actually nice to have an away team attacking us, rather than a side defending deep all the bloody time.”

Indeed, the away team were tight, putting us under pressure and attacking with intent. On twenty-four minutes, the unmarked Andreas Pereira spun and shot low at Kepa in the Shed End goal, but our ‘keeper responded so well to parry.

On the half-hour, at last we had some chances of our own, two in quick succession. Mudryk set up Havertz with a fine pass, but another offside. And then Mount set up Havertz came close again, but his first-time blast was wasteful, drawing groans as it flew high off his boot. On thirty-five minutes, there was a crunching tackle from Enzo in the centre-circle, and this was followed by a perfectly-weighted pass out to Hakim Ziyech, but his right-footed shot was blasted high and wide. That little cameo from the Argentine warmed me.

The atmosphere had been pretty rotten until now, with few songs and chants. Fulham had sounded like West Ham what with their demands for us to stick our blue flag up our collective arses. At last the home crowd responded with a loud-ish “Chelsea, Chelsea” a la “Amazing Grace.”

There was a quick break from the visitors and with bodies in the box, they really ought to have scored; a long cross towards Willian was headed back but Kepa gathered.

In the final minute of the half, Benoit Badiashile – enjoying a good performance – brilliantly intercepted a pass and set up an attack. At last a perfectly-flighted ball from the foot of Ziyech found Havertz, but his studied touch saw the ball sadly strike the post. There was nobody close to touch in the rebound.

Clive : “Mount stood and watched. Lampard would have been racing in.”

It hadn’t been a great performance. There seemed to be a positive reaction to our showing at Anfield, but this one was drawing groans as the match developed. I don’t always do it, but I sent out half-time ratings in a WhatsApp group.

Kepa 7

James 5 – Silva 6 – Badiashile 7 – Cucarella 4

Gallagher 6 – Enzo 7

Ziyech 4 – Mount 5 – Mudryk 4

Havertz 5

At the start of the second-half, another debut ensued as Graham Potter sent on Noni Madueke to replace Mudryk on the left wing. His initial involvement was thrilling, with a great show of speed and a willingness to race away and dribble in any direction, like a footballing Forrest Gump.

To Clive : “maybe this will be it for the next few games, every second-half we get to see a new rapid winger thrilling us all.”

There was a cross from a relatively quiet James but Leno was able to claim the ball before Maduenke could pounce.

On the hour, Willian rolled back the years with a super direct run into our box down below us, but his effort was blazed over.

Clive : “man of the match so far.”

There was a horrible tackle on Peireira on Cucarella, but no red card after a VAR review.

Two more substitutions followed.

Dave for Reece.

Raheem Sterling for Ziyech.

Madueke was now able to run amok on the right wing.

To Clive : “to be honest, I think we are worse this half.”

There was a stupid foul that lead to a booking for Gallagher, then another fleet-footed run by Willian but a thankfully weak shot straight at Kepa. Those half-time ratings were dropping to fours and fives with only Enzo and Badiashile maintaining a decent level, although Sterling started decently.

On sixty-nine minutes, an optimistic lob from the half-way line from Aleksandar Mitrovic resulted in Kepa back-peddling but we were grateful that he stopped the ball high on the line.

We improved a little, with Enzo going close with a fine curling drive that flew past a post.

On seventy-five minutes, David Fofana substituted the very disappointing Mount, who was now sporting a haircut that must have been based on a certain Butt-Head from around 1994. I wondered if Dennis Bergkamp was available for a routine alongside him…

”Arsenal. You said Arsenal.”

To Clive : “how has Havertz stayed on?”

A shot from Gallagher – that I caught on film – flew past the post.

More groans.

Willian was widely applauded when he was substituted on seventy-five minutes, a fine servant over recent years for us.

On seventy-eight minutes, Fofana broke in well from the right and, after some decent footwork as he rounded Leno, was perhaps unlucky to see his shot blocked on the line.

Fackinell.

My biggest moan of the night? On at least one occasion in the first-half and two in the second-half, Chelsea players, I remember Mount and Gallagher, failed to get their corners past the first man. How is that possible? Nothing infuriates me more.

To the bloke behind me : “all that sky to hit…for fuck sake.”

Late on, we were cheered to see Ben Chilwell make a cameo appearance for the under-fire Cucarella.

It stayed 0-0. In the bar before, I was only semi-serious, but I suppose I knew deep down. I have been going to Chelsea too long now.

There was rowdiness from the Fulham fans on the walk down the Fulham Road as we walked past the CFCUK stall, on towards the “Broadway Bar and Grill”, and one mouthy lad must have barked this out five times :

“All that fuckin’ money and you still couldn’t beat us.”

Things were heated between a few individuals and several police were seen rushing to quell a few flashpoints. A few obvious tourists looked on in horror.

I must admit that I was getting annoyed with them, these Fulham fans, probably for the first time ever.

After well over a century, perhaps that rivalry is beginning to heat up a little.

A little mob of Fulham fans trotted off down the Fulham Road – I suspect the majority of their fans live more locally than us – and it seemed strange to thank that, perhaps, a few would be able to get home within a few minutes. I wondered if many lived on the Clem Atlee.

I made a quick exit and was soon heading west down the M4. I would get home at around 1.15am, my weekend over before it would begin. There would be no Frome Town game for me to relish on the Saturday; they had played on this Friday night too, a home game with Bishop Cleeve from near Cheltenham. At least Frome won 2-0.

A disappointing performance from Chelsea? Yes.

But I like the look of Enzo, who I hope can develop into the goal-scoring play-maker that we have missed for what seems like an ice-age. I think he showed enough promise in his first game for us for me to pin some hopes on him. He looked neat in possession, with no Jorginho-style dawdling, and his range of passing can hopefully set our runners free. The pre-match optimism seemed to have deserted everyone in the stadium by the end of the game, so whereas a nice win would have set us all up for a tough, but winnable, game at West Ham next Saturday, we now go gingerly into the future.

Cue clichés about “trusting the process”, the “long haul” et-bloody-cetera. Is Potter the man to lead us? Ah, that’s the $64,000 question. Or the $640,000,000 question these days.

See you in East London next Saturday.

Tales From The Last Game

Posted on October 23, 2022 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Manchester United : 22 October 2022.

The busy month of October was continuing for Chelsea Football Club. The tea-time kick-off with Manchester United at Stamford Bridge would be match number seven with the two away games at Salzburg and Brighton to follow. On a personal level, this would be my seventy-ninth Chelsea game against Manchester United in total. I have seen Chelsea play against no other team more. It would also be the forty-third time that I would see us play Manchester United at Stamford Bridge. It seems relevant, acknowledging United’s rivalry with Liverpool, that this is the most games that I have seen against one team at home apart from Liverpool who weigh in with forty-seven games. In the grand total league table, Liverpool are right behind United in second place.

Manchester United 79
Liverpool 78
Arsenal 69
Tottenham 67
Newcastle United 53

By the end of this season, there might well be a tie at the top.

This would be Chelsea match 1,367 for me.

Of these, 11.5% will have been against either Manchester United or Liverpool.

One in ten games.

No wonder they say familiarity breeds contempt.

I saw that on the morning of the game, Mark Worrall said on “Facebook” that he rates the visit of Manchester United as his favourite home game. For me, it’s Tottenham, but I can understand why Mark named United. The aura surrounding the club has existed for decades and there is always a special buzz when United are in town. Due to the sheer number of their away support, especially when travelling en masse to away games became more popular in the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, there was no club that brought more away fans than Manchester United on their travels around the Football League. Stamford Bridge, surely, must have been a favourite destination for them. In those days, there was no rigid segregation at games and the Bridge was no different. But in those times, with the capacity at around the 60,000 figure, that large north terrace alone could hold fifteen thousand or more with ease. And on the occasions of United’s visit to SW6, let’s not kid ourselves, at times more than 15,000 United fans would flow through the turnstiles on the Fulham Road.

The first time that I remember seeing a Chelsea vs. Manchester United match on TV – on highlights, for those foreign readers, let’s not forget that the first live league football on TV in England only began in 1983 – was the last game of the 1972/73 season. I have written about this game before here – Bobby Charlton’s last-ever game for United, the comical knock-in from Peter Osgood at the Shed End, his shrug of the shoulders on his knees in the goalmouth – but it is worth telling again that at a three-sided Stamford Bridge, the gate was 44,000 (I didn’t have to look that up) and there must have been the best part of 20,000 United supporters inside.

The “Red Army” as they were known in the ‘seventies would flock to all of their away games in a way that no other club has done before or since. In those days of pay-on-the-gate admission and no segregation – certain ends were only suggested for fans to segregate, hence the rather loose adherence to this policy by the hooligan element of many teams – clubs could, and would, flood games depending on the circumstances.

I remember Liverpool flooding Molyneux in 1976 with 20.000 supporters. And it has come to light that in 1977, Chelsea were given the home end at Nottingham Forest by the police simply because enough had congregated there early in the afternoon. That must still hurt the Forest fans; we will find out, perhaps, on New Year’s Eve.

But no team did all this as consistently as United.

Much later, in the ‘nineties, when Wimbledon played at Selhurst Park, they attracted very low crowds, but this ground in south London became the favourite of Manchester United, and no-doubt its much-lampooned Home Counties support, as it was easy for them to access tickets in all areas of the stadium, year on year. It became the ‘nineties equivalent of Stamford Bridge in the late ‘sixties and early ‘seventies.

For example, in 1993/94 Wimbledon averaged 10,474, but the Manchester United game drew a massive 28,553. The following season, the figures were 13,246 and 25,380. It was a feature of London football at the time. No other London stadium had such a laissez-fare attitude to away support, nor the room anyway. By then, segregation was rife and away “takes” greatly diminished.

Stamford Bridge was still an exception though. And in the first few games of 1993/94, although the gate was 37,000 – ditto – for the Chelsea vs. Manchester United game, I would suggest that around 12,000 away fans were present. I can well remember getting into The Shed early and the north terrace was soon packed. I remember many United fans – no colours – being led out of The Shed for their own safety and escorted up to the north stand by the police. I never did find out how this procedure manifested itself. Was it simply a case of handfuls of United fans presenting themselves to stewards and pleading to be let into the north stand? I don’t know.

It was rather ignominious, being a Chelsea fan, seeing our ground swamped with United. In those days, football was about “how many did we take?” just as much as “how did we get on?” or “how did we play?”

I miss those days. You might have guessed.

The north stand probably held around 10,000 in those times. And the United presence that day was huge. There is no doubt that in addition to those United fans in the sweeping north terrace, there must have been a couple of thousand in the home seats and a residual amount in The Shed. I was stood next to one; my mate’s young brother who used to accompany me to a few Chelsea versus United games at the time. However, we will never know since United never scored.

In those days, it always pained me to see hundreds of United fans react to their team scoring in both stands; more so the East Stand to be fair, the nutters at Chelsea tended to go in the West Stand and only a brave away fan would sit there with the risk of getting slapped.

All of this is a very long way from 2022/23 where the police reduced the United away following from 3,000 to 2,400, though I am not sure why. I know that United have received many complaints over recent seasons for “consistent standing” at away games, but their spot in The Shed for this game was a “safe standing” zone anyway. Was it because the London Old Bill were admitting that they were unable to control three thousand? Who knows? It’s all very odd indeed. This move was very poorly received by the United away support, and quite rightly too.

I was in the stadium very early for this game. It had been a typical pre-match; a rush-around at the stadium and then to the pub with friends from near – Parky and Paul, Steve from Salisbury – and far – Ben and Mike from Boston, Bank from Bangkok, Mark from Spain, Luca and Robbie from The Netherlands, Andy and Josh from Orange County.

I was inside as early as 4.40pm. I soon decided to take a smattering of photographs of a virtually empty Stamford Bridge. Only a couple of thousand spectators, at most, were inside. As such, there was no atmosphere building anywhere. At the same comparative time at the 1993 game – effectively 2.10pm – the place would have been packed with the buzz building nicely.

Pre-match tunes, pre-match chants, pre-match songs, the gentle swell in numbers, the jostling for position, the anticipation rising.

I miss those days.

In 2022, there was music playing but elsewhere there was complete silence.

I took some photos from different angles of the same old features. I hope that you like them.

I soon spotted on my approach earlier in the day, out on the forecourt, there were rainbow-themed Chelsea kits welcoming supporters to a game when there was to be a nod towards equality in the game via the “Rainbow Laces” campaign. Out on the pitch, a banner with the Chelsea lion multi-coloured.

I wondered if the United support, vociferous with their “Chelsea Rent Boys” chants the past decade or more, would tone it down. I doubted it.

The minutes ticked-by. I was aware that I wasn’t as “up” for this as I should have been. I was a little wary of United’s recent run of form and of our two recent away, middling at best, performances. I think these thoughts dampened my spirits.

In the pub and elsewhere not only had I predicted a “0-0” but I would have been happy with a “0-0” too.

This was hardly a well-established United team. I wasn’t in awe of it. It was a mere shadow of former sides. And I thought the same of us really; my “tribute act” comment in the last episode, a throw-away line maybe, seemed to hit the spot.

The pre-match had no gravitas. There was no real thrill of what the evening would bring. It had the feel of a “run of the mill” game involving teams on the cusp of something better.

Graham Potter chose this starting eleven.

Kepa

Calobah – Silva – Cucarella

Dave – Jorginho – Loftus-Cheek – Chilwell

Mount – Aubameyang – Sterling

The United team? Who cared. I didn’t. But it looked like the retirement home for former Real Madrid players and that’s without “you-know-who” in the picture.

There was light drizzle just before the pre-match routines kicked in. It seemed to dampen the atmosphere further.

Before the entrance of the teams, a Matthew Harding flag travelled from east to west in the lower tier of the stand named after him. I have scanned the match programme four times now and I am yet to spot a mention of the death of our former director who was killed twenty-six years ago to the very day.

The fans in our stand, and those elsewhere, demand better.

Flames in front of the East Stand started flying up into the air – we had this American-style shite before Todd Boehly arrived and I guess we will have it after too – but at least my camera appreciated the reflections of the amber flames in the now sodden “Rainbow” banner on the centre-circle.

The game began.

I don’t always make notes on my ‘phone at every game, but on this occasion, I decided to. I suspect that the paucity of excitement on the pitch in the first-half and then throughout the game allowed me time to do so.

8 minutes.

Pierre-Emerick Aubamayang – I conjured up a short-hand of “pea” a few games back then completely forgot what it meant when I studied my notes later – was away but his effort was neither a shot nor a cross.

I wondered if his “peashooter” days were over.

9 minutes.

After Jorginho was beaten to a ball, and he tried to block, his body shape reminded me of the wonderful phrase from an ‘eighties fanzine that was used to illustrate a similarly derided midfielder, Darren Wood. His efforts to block the path of the ball likened him to a “stranded starfish.” It’s one of the great footballing phrases.

10 minutes.

Luke Shaw flashed wide.

11 minutes.

A half-decent “Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea” to the tune of “Amazing Grace.”

17 minutes.

United were in the ascendency now. They were finding extra players with ease. Yet their tendency to over-pass reminded me of us.

19 minutes.

“No foothold yet, Al.”

21 minutes.

I tapped out a phrase that I hate and may I forever reside in hell; “unable to beat the press.”

23 minutes.

Another fine “Amazing Grace.”

25 minutes.

A strong United spell had evolved. We looked second best here.

26 minutes.

The Stamford Bridge crowd clapped in memory of Matthew Harding and our stand sung his name.

31 minutes.

A fine Kepa block from Marcus Rashford.

33 minutes.

Frustration all around.

37 minutes.

A substitution and Mateo Kovacic for Marc Cucarella. There was a change in shape to a 4-3-3. This met with our approval.

38 minutes.

A very messy chance, after United failed to clear, but Peashooter scuffed it wide.

39 minutes.

An Eriksen shot from distance was well wide.

40 minutes.

A cross from the left and a leap from Aubameyang but contact was light and off-target.

42 minutes.

The same player was played in with a ball rolled across the box but he could not quite reach.

44 minutes.

Anthony – a player that I am proud to say I know nothing about – shot from distance and, as it struck a supporting stanchion, my mind played tricks with me and I thought it was in. It certainly was a close one.

I was just pleased to get to the break at 0-0. We had been poor. United had bossed the middle section of the first forty-five minutes. I wasn’t so sure where a goal would originate. Maybe my 0-0 guess wasn’t so far off. A pal who sits behind me commented :

“Get any good photos that half? I suspect not.”

“No. Shite.”

Only two are shared here.

Things were better in the second-half, but I soon commented “we have dragged them down to our level.”

50 minutes.

A scare when Kepa raced out to reach a ball near our left touchline and we then nervously gasped as the ball was eventually passed out of defence. We took forever. The chance of a quick break, exposing space, was lost.

56 minutes.

United, I noted, were not as loud as in the past. I wondered if the missing six-hundred were the singers.

58 minutes.

Sterling elected to pass inside when a shot was probably the best option.

60 minutes.

The noisiest moment of the game, perhaps, helped escort Varane off the pitch.

62 minutes.

“Chalobah playing well, lads.”

64 minutes.

“We have looked tired from the start, really.”

70 minutes.

A header from Clever Trevoh skimmed the top of the bar.

71 minutes.

We were hitting a little spell now, easily the best of the game, and the noise grew with our intensity.

74 minutes.

Christian Pulisic for Aubameyang, not surprisingly.

75 minutes.

The ever-frustrating Ruben Loftus-Cheek lost the ball in a dangerous position but a Bruno Fernandes shot was saved so well by Kepa.

79 minutes.

Armando Broja for Raheem Sterling, not surprisingly.

84 minutes.

I captured the very start of the pushing and shoving by substitute McTominay on our boy Broja. But I was watching the flight of the ball when the man-handling reached silly proportions. I saw the referee point. Oh boy. What drama.

86 minutes.

Just like in Milan, Jorginho walked away with the ball as tempers raged in the United team.

87 minutes.

Goal. Get in you bastard. What a clean penalty.

88 minutes.

CAREFREE WHEREVER YOU MAY BE WE ARE THE FAMOUS CFC.

89 minutes.

The stadium was a riot of noise now alright. For too long, the noise had been shite.

90 minutes.

AND IT’S SUPER CHELSEA. SUPER CHELSEA FC. WE’RE BY FAR THE GREATEST TEAM THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.

94 minutes.

Chelsea unable to clear. A floater from the left. Two United players leap. That gut-wrenching feeling. The ball dropped into the goal. But no, wait, it came back off the post. And Kepa miraculously claimed it.

No.

Goal.

Bloody Casemiro.

Noise now from the two thousand odd in the away end.

95 minutes.

The Bridge was absolutely silent apart from 2,400 voices.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE MAN UNITED?”

At least there was nobody jumping up and being a twat in the home areas.

It was, sadly, a very fair result.

I reached home to see the game’s highlights on “Match of the Day” and it was the last match featured.

Chelsea and United, the last game on “MOTD”? The absolute shame of it.

See you in Salzburg on Tuesday.

Tales From My San Siro Odyssey

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Chris Axon

Milan vs. Chelsea : 11 October 2022.

My San Siro odyssey began in August 1986.

Whereas my 1985 Inter-Rail jaunt around Europe took in many countries, from Italy in the south to Sweden in the north, the 1986 version – another solo-trip, another dose of me finding confidence through travel – was focussed on Spain, France, Italy and the Greek Island of Corfu. It was all about exploring the southern parts of Europe and the first fortnight or so encompassed Biarritz, Madrid, Barcelona, the Italian Riviera for a week, Pisa and Rome before I then spent around ten relaxing days in three locations on Corfu. After that had all finished, and on the return trip north, I wanted to stop off in Milan. In the three weeks or so that I had been away from Blighty, I had already visited Camp Nou in Barcelona and Stadio Olimpico in Rome. To miss out on the San Siro – or the Giuseppe Meazza as it is sometimes known – would have been foolhardy.

I caught the long overnight train – fourteen hours, the longest of the whole month – from Brindisi to Milano Centrale, arriving at 9am on a Thursday morning in early August.

Ah, Milano Centrale.

It brought back memories of my very first taste of Italy.

In 1975, on my first European holiday, my parents and I caught a train from London Victoria to Milan, another overnighter, on the way to Diano Marina in the Italian Riviera, and so the immense interior of this incredible station – Mussolini must have liked marble – thus witnessed my first ever steps on Italian soil.

A year later, another Italian holiday – this time to Lido di Jesolo near Venice – and another train to Milano Centrale. On this occasion, our onward leg was by coach and so we walked outside the station to pick up the connection. I was therefore able to witness the three huge halls that made up the station frontage. These were equally as impressive as the three semi-circular roof spans covering all of the train tracks.

By 1976, I had already chosen Juventus as my Italian and my sole European team but was of course aware of the two Milan teams who, in those days, were known in England as AC Milan and Inter Milan.

An Italian family had settled in my home village after the war and although they didn’t seem to be particularly into football, one of the brothers had a son, Adriano, who occasionally visited and he once told me that he favoured Milan. Incidentally, the mother in this family lived to a very grand age of 109. There must be something in that Italian diet.

My parents, on a whistle-stop visit to Milan on an Italian holiday in the ‘fifties had called in to see this family’s relations and my father often told the story of being given a few shots of the infamous grappa.

On a few visits to Italy, back to Diano Marina again and again to see my pal Mario, I became acquainted with more and more aspects of the Italian game. At that time, Inter were bigger than Milan – in terms of fan base – and the two clubs’ support tended to be split along socio-political lines.

Inter : middle class, to the right.

Milan : working class, to the left.

Oh, and I soon learned that “Inter Milan” was wrong, very wrong…either Inter or Internazionale and nothing else. At the time, Juventus were the dominant team but the two Milanese had sporadic success. Milan won a scudetto in 1978/79 but were then relegated to Serie B in 1979/80 due to a betting scandal and again in 1981/82 due to being, er, shite.

Which brings us nicely to 1982/83 again.

As I have mentioned previously, the visit of Leeds United to Stamford Bridge on Saturday 9 October 1982 absolutely captivated me. It stirred so much emotion. And it engendered such a sense of anticipation.

Chelsea versus Leeds.

Bloody fantastic.

Growing up, Leeds were a massive name. Just as I was getting into football, the big teams were Leeds United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea. Derby County were champions in 1972 but never really had the same clout as the others. Manchester United? No, a joke of a club on the decline. Manchester City? Off the radar.

With Leeds getting unceremoniously dumped into the old Second Division at the end of the 1981/82 season, throughout that summer I was kept buoyed with the thought that I would be – hopefully – able to see them play my beloved Chelsea at Stamford Bridge for the very first time.

The fixtures were announced. I would not have to wait too long. Unlike the Leicester City game in September when I travelled up by train, for the Leeds game I went up by National Express coach from Bath. This was a tiresome journey and I remember being relatively miserable about the whole experience. I think it was a bit cheaper than the train – my diary mentions the coach costing £5.50 – and it was all about saving money for football in those days.

I remember that some long lost Canadian cousins had recently dropped in on us – my father’s cousin from Vancouver – and I had been gifted an oversized Vancouver Whitecaps shirt as a present. I know I decided to wear it up to the Leeds United game. What do I remember of the day? I remember arriving at Victoria Coach Station and catching a tube to Fulham Broadway.

I distinctly remember this :

I was stood in the central aisle, and I noted a young lad in front of me. Maybe the same age, seventeen. He was smartly dressed. He was wearing some sportswear. Maybe some Adidas trainers. Actually, maybe some desert boots. Maybe a Slazenger pullover. Perhaps an Adidas rain jacket. Definitely some tight jeans. And I certainly remember thinking “mmm, that’s a new look, something different, bit like a mod but with a football twist.” I was certain that he was going to Chelsea. I don’t remember a pin badge though. And I remember him looking at me in my Vancouver Whitecaps shirt, and the thought went through my head that he was trying to suss out who I was, which team.

At that time, living in rural Somerset, I was blissfully unaware of the dress code that had enveloped urban cities such as Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and London but which had originated on the football terraces. There were skinheads, punks, headbangers, mods, but that was it as far as I was concerned.

Looking back, I am positive that my first ever sighting of a casual took place on the tube on the way to Chelsea and Leeds that day. I would later learn that on that very day, the warring factions – I am not sure if I had heard of the Leeds Service Crew in 1982 but it is quite possible – were chasing each other around Piccadilly Circus that lunchtime.

The programme memorably had this message emblazoned on the cover :

“Welcome to all Leeds United fans present today. Chelsea FC extend a warm welcome to the supporters of our distinguished visitors Leeds United. We hope you witness an exciting match and have a message for you – don’t be a mug, don’t be a thug – and help your club achieve greatness once again.”

I remember having a chuckle at this. There was no mention of a warning to Chelsea fans here. It would seem that we were an innocent party. I can just imagine Ken Bates mouthing the “don’t be a mug, don’t be a thug” to the programme editor.

“Yeah, that scans well. Put that in.”

I don’t remember much of the actual game and sadly I didn’t take my camera to games in those days. I absolutely remember the malevolent atmosphere though. I watched from my usual spot in The Shed, under the roof – just – and towards the tea bar. Leeds, I suppose, had around three thousand fans and the size of the gate really warmed me. It was 25,358, much more than I had expected and the third biggest of the day in the Football League. I remember Leeds in two central pens, nobody else on the bleak north terrace. But I remember that the northern segments of The Benches and the East Lower – what I would later learn to be the infamous Gate 13 – were absolutely rammed. It was as if the stadium had been tilted north and everyone had been squashed up against the north terrace. This gave me, an excitable youngster, the impression that the Chelsea fans just wanted to have a go at the Leeds lot.

There was one chant from The Shed that made me grimace :

“Did the Ripper, did the Ripper, did the Ripper get your Mum? Did the Ripper get your Mum?”

This was the Yorkshire version, not Jack of old London town.

The teams that day?

Chelsea : Steve Francis, Gary Locke, Chris Hutchings, Micky Droy, Colin Pates, John Bumstead, Tony McAndrew, Mike Fillery, Pop Robson, David Speedie, Clive Walker.

Leeds United : John Lukic, Trevor Cherry, Eddie Gray, Kenny Burns, Paul Hart, Gwynn Thomas, Kevin Hird, Aiden Butterworth, Frank Worthington, Frank Gray, Arthur Graham.

This would be my first sighting of David Speedie. There are some names in that Leeds team. The Gray brothers. Kenny Burns. I must admit that I have no recollection of seeing Frank Worthington but I am glad that I evidently did. He was one of football’s great mavericks. Please Google his goal for Bolton against Ipswich Town in 1979.

Sadly, the game ended 0-0 and was memorable for the outbreaks of fighting in the East Stand than the quality on show on the pitch.

I sloped off and ended up waiting at Victoria for an hour or so to catch a coach home. Some Tottenham fans had been at their game at home to Coventry City and we got talking. Once they heard I was Chelsea, they told me to watch out for Leeds fans as they were “nasty buggers” and I remember one of them eying up what I was wearing.

“Don’t worry, I think that you will be safe with that on.”

Let’s move on four years to 1986 and my short stopover in Milan. I bought a map at the station and walked down past La Scala Opera House to the grand cathedral – Il Duomo – in the city centre before walking to Cairoli and catching a tube to Lotto. The weather was super-hot and the walk to San Siro was tough going. I first thought that I wouldn’t be able to get in, but thankfully I soon found an open gate so sneaked inside. In those days, the stadium was just two-tiered, a huge concrete edifice. Childhood hero Ray Wilkins was playing for Milan at the time. Another couple of tourists were inside too. One of them took a photo of me looking ridiculously tanned after my stay on Corfu. San Siro was undergoing a transformation over the summer; plastic seats were being bolted onto the once bare concrete, at least on the steps of the lower deck. I took photos inside and out. It was a joy to be inside one of the palaces of European football. My diary tells me that I scrawled “Chelsea FC” on one of the green seats at the northern end. That doesn’t surprise me. I had scrawled the same on a fence at the stadium in Rome too.

I didn’t leave Milan that day until I took a train to Paris at around 7pm. There is no doubt that I would have spent a fair few hours at Milano Centrale, an activity that I would repeat many times over the next four years as I repeatedly returned to Italy. My diary noted that Milan was “not a fantastic place really” but I enjoyed being in this famous city, this famous football city, and of course the home of Italian fashion and the birthplace of the “paninari” a few years earlier.

Earlier in 1986, I had bought the Pet Shop Boys’ mini-album “Disco” and absolutely loved the song “Paninaro” :

“Passion and love and sex and money.
Violence, religion, injustice and death.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Girls, boys, art, pleasure.
Girls, boys, art, pleasure.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Food, cars, travel.
Food, cars, travel, travel.
New York, New York, New York.
New York.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Armani, Armani, ah-ah-Armani.
Versace, cinque.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.

Armani, Armani, ah-ah-Armani.
Versace, cinque.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.

I don’t like country-and-western.
I don’t like rock music.
I don’t like, I don’t like rockabilly or rock & roll particularly.
Don’t like much really, do I?
But what I do like I love passionately.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.

You, you’re my lover, you’re my hope, you’re my dreams.
My life, my passion, my love, my sex, my money.
Violence, religion, injustice and death.

Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
Don’t like much really, do I?
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.
But what I do like I love passionately.
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh, oh, oh.

What an anthem. In 1986, the paninaro look was definitely assisting the UK’s casual look to evolve. I had bought some deck shoes, a “Best Company” T-shirt and always had one eye on what was happening in Italy and on the terraces at Chelsea and elsewhere. It was a great time to be young and into football, music and clobber; the time of my life.

At San Siro in 1986, just for the record…red Kappa polo shirt, Adidas shorts and a pair of yellow espadrilles.

There is one more thing to add from my holiday in 1986. At Ipsos on Corfu, I shared a tent with a chap called Rob who owned a record shop in Sacramento in California. Every few months, he would visit London and buy up a ton of obscure music posters, T-shirts, and rare CDs and ship them out to the US to sell at hugely-inflated prices. It got me thinking. I cottoned on to the genius of selling rare items at a nice profit. Thankfully, I didn’t have to think too long. My post-college future was decided during that Inter-Rail trip of 1986. I would buy English football badges – the small, super small, circular ones – and travel out to Europe flip-flopping between games in Germany and Italy to sell them at games. For all of its problems with hooliganism, or being blunt because of it, I just knew that English badges would sell well in Europe.

I was itching to go. Sadly, I had one more year at college to endure.

Tick tock, tick tock.

1986/87 passed with Chelsea finishing in a lowly fourteenth place but I had fared better; I somehow passed my Geography degree with an Upper Second. However, my immediate future didn’t involve job fairs, interviews or further studies. My future was focussed on football.

Fackinell.

That summer I returned to work in a local dairy, as in 1984, to gather some sheccles together for more foreign travel. In September, I set off with two college mates – Ian and Trev, the same course – for another spin around Europe. On a Saturday evening in Rome in early September, after another visit to Stadio Olimpico, I stumbled across a booklet listing the Serie A fixtures for the season.

A quick scan of the fixtures : Inter vs. Empoli.

“Fancy it? Sunday.”

“Too right.”

We were headed up to Venice for an early morning visit, arriving at 6.30am. However, after a whirlwind walking tour, we were away at 9.45am and headed to Milan via a change at Vicenza. I had bought a copy of the famous daily sports paper “La Gazetta Dello Sport” to check some details about the game and tickets were on sale for L.10,000 or about five quid. The fervour being shown by a train full of Brescia fans en route to Padua – a local derby – astonished us. It was a fine pre-curser to our afternoon in Milan. We got in at 1.30pm and the game was to kick-off at 3pm. Perfect. We disappeared underground and took a metro to San Siro which was quite a way out. There was a free bus at Lotto to take us to the stadium. I had time to peruse the various grafters outside.

“No English badges. Great stuff.”

Italian ones were selling for L3,100 or about £1.50.

Our tickets positioned us above a small knot of Empoli fans in the southern end, the “Lions’ Den” section where Milan’s ultras congregated. We had reached our seats by entering near the northern end but the steady slope took us around the outside of the stadium to deposit us in the southern end. To my amazement, we sat on raw concrete. But I was not bothered. I was in football heaven.

The Alps were visible above the Inter fans in the north end. I loved all the banners.

“Boys.”

I think that was their main group.

“Boys San.”

Loved it.

Empoli? I knew little about them apart from that they were newly promoted. On the previous weekend, they had won 2-0 at home to Juventus, a huge shock at the time. On this day in sunny Milan, I watched on with great pleasure. This was my first professional football match outside of England, Scotland and Wales.

The San Siro would always have a place in my heart.

The Inter team that day included some stars; Walter Zenga, Giuseppe Bergomi, Alessandro Altobelli plus the two “stranieri” Daniel Pasarella and Enzo Schifo. It was an utter joy to witness Italian football in the flesh.

Aldo Serena and Altobelli gave Inter a 2-0 win in front of 42,672.

My diary notes “I am sure I can make a killing there with badges.”

Later that year, in November, I sold badges at Juventus’ Stadio Communale before an evening game against Panathinaikos in the UEFA Cup. I only sold 31 but it was a start. I was less fortunate in Mannheim and Munich in Germany. I was stopped by the police in Mannheim and also in Munich where I decided to foolishly chance my luck. I had sold 34 at Munich’s Olympic Stadium – going well – but I did not have a street trader’s licence – “reisegewerbekarte” – so was arrested and fined on the spot. However, a cop let me in to watch the last twenty minutes of the Bayern vs. Uerdingen game for free.

In February 1988, I was at it again.

My first game was at San Siro, and a friendly involving Milan and Steaua Bucharest on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Unbeknown to me, the Serie A games had been cancelled due to an Italy vs. Russia game in Bari on the Saturday but thank goodness Milan had sorted out a friendly. Milan were in full flow at this time with Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten leading the team to glory. I did OK at this game. The gate was only 14,000 but I sold 26 badges and 2 scarves. One bloke swapped his “Fossa Dei Leoni” badge for one of mine. There were a few nervous moments as several police cars drove past but I was not spoken to. I had decided to pitch myself near the to where the Lotto busses stopped. It seemed perfect. I was positioned just outside the San Siro “Trotter” arena; horse racing but with the jockeys in little buggies.

It is a mystery why I did not pay the £4 to attend the game. I guess that I was on a limited budget – I certainly ate frugally and infrequently while away for a month – and the whole point of me being in Italy was, firstly, to make some money. I walked away with £40 in my pockets, and a profit of about £25.

Small acorns and all that.

A week later, I was back at San Siro for the Milan vs. Sampdoria game. Here was the real test. Thankfully this went swimmingly well. Again, I didn’t go inside, but for a valid reason; it was a sell-out. At half-time I was stood outside the stadium with a few thousand others. I went on a wander across the vast car park and returned to hear the clamour as Milan’s second goal went in. They were to win 2-1. The attendance was 72,000 and I walked away with £125 and a profit of about £80. I had sold 80 badges and 7 scarves. Not bad for around four hours’ work. I was in heaven with thoughts of returning again. And again.

Before the game, probably against my better wishes, I had bought the monthly magazine “Forza Milan.” As a Juventus fan, it was a bad move, but I just wanted to immerse myself in Italian football. It really was a heady time to be a Milanista. It felt that their time had come. At the end of the 1987/88 season, they were crowned as champions for the first time since 1979. Silvio Berlusconi was in charge, Arrigo Sacchi and his famous “pressing” was getting the best out of his players. And Gullit and Van Basten were soon to be European Champions with The Netherlands in the summer.

Mamma mia.

Later that week, I did even better at Verona, selling 79 badges from a crowd of just 33,000 before and after a UEFA Cup game with Werder Bremen.

In the summer of 1988, I recorded an episode of “Rough Guide – Milan” with Magenta Devine and Sankha Guha (remember them?) and the travel guide totally encapsulated all that was rattling around my brain at the time. There is no doubt that I was deeply infatuated with all things Italian from the mid-‘eighties onwards.

My next trip to Milan, and San Siro, would be my last for thirty-two years. It came in September 1990, right after the momentous Italia’90 World Cup – when many English folk “rediscovered football”, stop sniggering at the back – and I had returned from an equally momentous ten-month holiday in North America. With English football back with a vengeance after some dark days, the time was right for me to head over with a freshly-acquired stash of English – and Scottish, Celtic in particular always sold well in Italy – badges.

It was a heady time for Italian football. The national team had threatened in the World Cup before falling to a Maradona-inspired Argentina in a semi-final. However, I always thought that it was club over country in Italy, even more so than in England.

The Serie A title was certainly shared around in this period.

1985 : Verona.

1986 : Juventus.

1987 : Napoli.

1988 : Milan.

1989 : Inter.

1990 : Napoli.

The second Sunday of the 1990/91 Serie A season saw me return to Milan for the Inter vs. Bologna game.

At the end of the day, I started my daily journal :

Milano Centrale, Sunday 16September 1990.

“Tutto Inglese e Scozzese. Quatro mila lire.”

My sales patter didn’t go on for long, but it certainly did the job. I must have repeated that phrase five hundred times in the six hours before the 4pm kick-off.

My diary reports a “perfect day” and it is certainly one that I look back upon with a great deal of pleasure. It was, simply, one of the best “non-Chelsea” days of my life. I had arrived at Milano Centrale at just before 8am. By 10am I had arrived outside the remodelled San Siro and – oh my goodness – I can well remember the sight of those monstrous red girders floating above the photogenic towers that had been added to the San Siro since my last visit eighteen months earlier.

Within an hour, I had sold 26 badges to a stall-holder, at a slight-knock down price of L.3,500 each. I had decided to up the price to L.4,000 per badge from my L.3,000 price in 1988. I stopped selling at 3.15pm in order to buy a ticket off a tout – I couldn’t miss this game – and I nabbed one for L.25,000 instead of L.20,000.

As it happened, I could afford it.

My one memory of this day is of ascending one of the helix shaped towers behind the South Curv and scrambling to a seat almost at the rear of the very back row of the third level. I stood up and spent what seemed a long time picking L.5,000, L.10,000, L.20,000 notes and even one L.50,000 note out of all four pockets of my jeans and adding them to the pile in my wallet.

That day I sold almost 200 badges. I even sold some on the slow walk back to Lotto without even trying; a lad had remembered me from before the game and stopped me to buy ten. By the time I had pulled the last note from my jeans, I had made £330 which equated to a profit of around £200.

I hope the tax man isn’t reading this.

The game was half decent. Inter had the three World Cup winners Klinsmann, Matheus and Brehme in their team. I noted that Bologna countered well. In the last minute, Alessandro Bianchi scored with a great volley in front of the “Ultras”, “Boys San” and “Vikings” in the home Curva Nord to give Inter a 1-0 win. The noise was utterly incredible even though the gate was only around 50,000. The other lot, Milan, were the bigger draw by far at the time. They were the “buzz” around the city.

On the following Sunday, I paid another visit to San Siro and another fine afternoon followed. This time it was Milan vs. Fiorentina. I didn’t go inside for this one. Outside, I sold just under one hundred badges. My diary notes that I soon sold out of Liverpool, Chelsea and Celtic – by far the best sellers in 1990 for reasons that might well be obvious – and so I did well to sell so many. I was outside the stadium when Milan scored their first goal – they went on to win 2-1 – but I left for the station well before the end as I had developed a bad headache. One thing of note; I had been chatting to an English guy from Rochdale who had stayed over from the World Cup with England. He was interested in selling badges too; he seemed a bit of a chancer, but I gave him the ‘phone number of the bloke in Blackburn who had provided me with the badges. He disappeared off to “blag” some tickets but I later saw him, crestfallen, having been picked up by plain clothes cops, his tickets nicked too.

What a plum.

Alas, my badge-selling days were over before they had really got going.

There is a sad end to all of this in fact. A few days after the greatest days in Milan, I was robbed while on a train from Zurich to Genoa – I was knocked out using CS gas I think, it was all the rage on Italian trains at the time, luckily my Inter-Rail Card and passport were untouched – and so I had to sheepishly make my way to Turin where my friend Tullio’s father lent me some money to get home.

I remember his father answered the doorbell, so surprised to see me.

“Ah Chris! Come va?”

“Cosi cosi.”

It was the biggest understatement of all time.

This story continues on though. In 1995, I met up with Pete, the chap who sold me all those badges at cost price – bless him – before a Chelsea game at Ewood Park. He treated me to a pub lunch and we spoke about our grafting days. He was a Liverpool supporter – he was there in Rome in 1977 and elsewhere too – and when I spoke about Milan, I mentioned the chancer I had met in 1990.

“Oh, Milan John?”

“You know him?”

“Yes. From Rochdale. I always wondered how he got my number.”

“Bloody hell, Pete, I gave it to him.”

It turned out that this bloke had stayed on in Milan and was now living with the woman who was running the newsagents on the platform at Milano Centrale. He often bought badges from Pete. To say I was fed-up was another understatement.

“Bloody hell. That could have been me. Could have met an Italian girl. Could have had badges sent out to me. What a bugger.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Milan : you could have made me.

Vaffanculo.

In February 1997, Chelsea played Milan in a friendly at San Siro and a few hardy souls went over to watch. We lost 2-0 in front of 8,756. I think both teams just needed a game. A few friends attended but there was no way I could go over.

In October 1999, Chelsea played Milan in the San Siro in the Champions League group phase. Unfortunately, I was unable to get time off work and so, sadly, missed it.

In March 2010, Chelsea played Inter in the Champions League quarter-finals. Again, work got in the way. I had just changed companies and I knew my new boss would have struggled without me in the office for three days and so I valiantly – stupidly? – decided that I would forego my chance to see us in Milan.

I have seen Chelsea play seven times in Italy – three against Juve, two against Roma, one against Lazio, one against Napoli, and not a single win – but a visit to San Siro with my beloved Chelsea was evading me like Tottenham’s relationship with silverware.

It was gnawing at me.

There were ongoing rumours, which gathered strength over the years, of both Milan teams moving into a new build which would rise in the car park where I had walked in 1988. This news depressed me. I saw the plans for the new place. They looked super-modern yet so bland. The drama of San Siro’s bulk was missing. Sigh.

Thankfully, our names were drawn in the same group this autumn and I could look forward, at bloody last, to a visit.

ANDIAMO!

The plan was this :

A flight to Turin on the Sunday evening. By the time I had got to looking at flights after returning from Chelsea on a Saturday night, all of the cheap and timely flights to Milan had disappeared. Not to worry, I much prefer Turin to Milan. Three nights in a central apartment with PD and Parky. I would hire a car on the day of the game. A brief spell of sightseeing in central Milan then off to the match. A midnight flit back to Turin and then a flight home from the city’s Caselle airport on Wednesday evening.

I picked up PD at 11am on the Sunday morning and Lord Parky not long after. It was a fine drive to Gatwick. Despite the 4.40pm flight leaving an hour late, the pilot must have known a short cut as he clipped thirty minutes off the flight time. I had a window seat and particularly enjoyed the flight over the English Channel. I pondered how many thousands of articulated lorries I had sent over this small expanse of water since I began at my job in March 2003. From the air, I was able to easily see both coasts; France to the left, England to the right. I thought back to all those solo trips to Europe in my Inter-Railing days. What good times.

We landed at Caselle at 8.10pm. We took a cab to the city. By 9.12pm, I had navigated how to obtain our apartment keys and to enter our pad on Via Fratelli Calandra. Outside, misty rain. But our spirits were lifted when we spotted a small pizza place directly opposite. We sat ourselves inside on some high stools and ordered the first beers of the trip.

“Ichnusa” – from Sardinia – was first spotted by us in Rome in 2017, and here it was again. It was a fine lager. I had a pepperoni pizza – cheap, only eight euros – and all was well with the world. We slept soundly.

Monday was a lovely, lazy day. My two fellow Chuckle Brothers had only visited Italy once before – that Rome trip in 2017 – so Turin was new to them. I took them alongside the River Po, and spoke about the city a little. But I soon found my voice often drifting away to silence when I realised that they weren’t really taking it all in.

I’ll never make a tour guide.

We sat at a few cafes and ordered some cappuccinos. We got the nod that Callum was going to be in town for an hour or so en route to Milan so we caught a cab to Porta Susa train station. This was fine since it enabled me to scope out the Hertz car hire place that I would be utilising on the Tuesday. We all met up in a bar.

We wondered if we had indeed sold all 4,300 tickets. All we knew is that they had gone “off sale” so we hoped so. I spoke to Cal about my Italian pal Tullio who I have known since meeting him in Diano Marina, that town again, in 1981.

“I remember one Saturday morning, ahead of a Napoli game on the Sunday, in 1988…he drove over to meet some school friends after they had gone in to study. They were all labelled-up. Best Company sweatshirts. Timberlands. Sisley coats. Benetton. Lacoste. Jansport duffle bags. Even their school files were adorned with designer labels.”

“I need to up my game here.”

My Joe Bloggs denim shirt looked decidedly downmarket in comparison.

In the afternoon, we slurped a draught Ichnusa apiece in a bar directly opposite one of Turin’s must-see attractions. The National Cinema Museum is housed within the Mole Antonelliana, a building with a domed roof and spear-like tower. Rob and I went up the lift to the viewing gallery in 2009 and I was hoping to do the same this year. Alas, the lift was not working. Not to worry, I visited the film museum while PD and Parky supped on more Ichnusa.

What a joy.

And this was just right for me. During the first nervous months of lockdown in 2020, I really got into Italian films, especially those of the neo-realist school; step forward Rosselini, de Sica, Visconti, Fellini and Antonioni. I always loved “La Dolce Vita” but also really admired “Bicycle Thieves”, “Rome Open City” and the best of the lot “Two Women.” I also fell in love with Sophia Loren. Again.

The museum was stupendous. It was a visual treat. If you ever find yourself in Turin – I call it Italy’s hidden jewel – go. In fact, go now. Tell them I sent you.

That evening, we dropped into two familiar pubs on the main drag, Corso Vittorio Emanuelle II; “Six Nations” and “The Huntsman.” In the second one, we sat at the exact same table that we used on the night before the Juve game last season. Lo and behold, who should walk past but Andy – from the East Midlands I believe – who I last spent time with in Abu Dhabi. He too had flown into Turin.

As I always say : “Chelsea World is a very small world.”

Tullio popped in to see us for an hour or so. It was a joy to see him again. He was, alas, visibly hurting after Juventus’ continued failings under Massimilliano Allegri. I spoke about my previous visits to Turin.

I worked out this was visit number ten.

“No, wait. Eleven. I forgot your wedding.”

We smirked.

1987 : Juve vs. Panathinaikos.

1988 : Juve vs. Inter.

1988 : Juve vs. Napoli.

1989 : Juve vs. Fiorentina.

1990 : the “so so” moment.

1992 : Juve vs. Sampdoria.

1999 : Juve vs. Fiorentina – oh, and the wedding of Tullio and Emanuela.

2009 : Juve vs. Chelsea.

2012 : Juve vs. Chelsea.

2021 : Juve vs. Chelsea.

2022 : Milan vs.Chelsea.

The evening was lovely. We rounded off the night with several shots of “Baileys” and God knows why. It was, as ever, a good night.

On the Tuesday, the day of the game, PD woke me at around 6.45am. We walked to the Porta Nova train station and caught a cab to Porta Susa with blue skies overhead and the city of Turin looking as gorgeous as ever.

Sorting out the car took a few minutes, but I was soon heading east through the rush-hour traffic of Turin. It was slow going during the first half-an-hour. But we were soon on the A4 to Milan. It made me chuckle really. In my childhood, my father used to drive along a section of the A4 – Beckhampton to Hungerford – on numerous trips to Chelsea. On this A4 instead of signs for Fyfield, Marlborough, Savernake, Axford and Hungerford there were signs for Chivasso, Greggio, Vercelli, Novara and Galliate. To our left, the snow-capped peaks of the Alps were stunning.

This was no normal Chelsea away trip.

This was one of the very best.

We stopped briefly at a service station near Novara. I stacked up on coffee and snacks.

There was heavy traffic, again, just after a toll on the western outskirts of Milan. A journey that was due to take two hours was nearing one of three hours. But I knew we were closing in on our goal. My work colleague Lorenzo had highlighted the Lampugnano transport hub as the best place to park for San Siro. I was headed there, but first wanted to park up at San Siro because…well, because…it needs no explanation.

At around 11.30am, I briefly parked my black Toyota outside a stadium car park and took a few shots with my camera. The stadium looked even greater than I had remembered it. It was simply stunning. A dormant beast. Those cylindrical towers. Those slopes of concrete. Those roof beams. Spectacular. I was boiling over with emotion.

After six previous visits I was at last going to see us play here.

It was forever a standing joke about Milan that no matter what year you visited it, the roads were always in a state of upheaval due to metro extensions taking place. I am sure my parents mentioned this from their visit in the ‘fifties. Well, ironically, the lines are all fully extended now and completely finished, but on this day of all days there was a bloody tube strike.

At Lampugnano, we were therefore forced to catch a cab into the city. The taxi driver was a Milanista and resembled Zlatan Ibrahimovic. We were driven in past the striking new skyscrapers to the immediate north-west of the centre. We soon collected our match tickets at the Westin Hotel on Piazza della Repubblica. There were familiar faces outside. It was true; we had sold all 4,300 tickets.

Magnificent. Well done everyone.

We met up with fellow Somerset supporters Charlotte and Paul, Donna and Colby. A little sight-seeing was in order. I suggested a short hop north to Milano Centrale. This edifice did not disappoint. It was as stunning today as in 1975. While PD and Parky retired to the station bar, I gave the others a quick tour. I was reminded of the time – after the Milan game in September 1990 I think – when thousands of Inter fans returned from a game just as I had reached the outer hall. They were full of noise and of course the chanting echoed around the vast chamber to superb effect. I was also reminded, after a hot day walking the streets of Milan, how cool it was inside.

Yeah, Mussolini loved marble.

We walked south then caught a tube, bang on three o’clock when the strike ended, at Turati to Duomo. I had always walked this section, so exiting the metro stop and seeing the myriad towers of the city cathedral for the first time was another stunning moment. I never was a great fan of the city, but its two great cathedrals – Il Duomo and San Siro – are outrageously magnificent.

More photos. A beer in a bar. And a panini. When in Rome.Then a tube down to the area called Navigli, where several canals join and a vibrant bar scene has developed. It was where Chelsea were based on the Monday, and it is where many friends were based pre-match.

The place was mobbed. We didn’t venture too far. Many bars had run dry. Beers were on hold at the first place we queued. This was all a bit of a ball ache. Thankfully, PD and Parky had spotted a quieter bar near the nearest tube station so re-camped there. I waited for some friends – Georg and Petr from Prague, Eliot and Lawson from New York, then Sean from New York – and we had a relaxing natter. One more pint of “Warsteiner.” Just two pints was enough. I had to drive back to Turin after the game after all. Georg and Petr asked of our predictions and a 2-1 Chelsea win was a common response.

We set off for San Siro at around 6.45pm. Plenty of time? Think again.

The tube was rammed. But rather than changing at Cadorna onto the red line – which I was planning to do – everyone didn’t budge. At Cadorna, none of us could leave the compartment. We were therefore forced to stay on to Garibaldi. When a train pulled in, a young woman saw who – or rather what – was waiting to join her carriage and physically ran down the compartment.

Maybe she was a Tottenham supporter.

My route would have been eleven stops. This new route was sixteen stops. What a pain. It got worse. At Domodossola, hundreds of Chelsea fans were singing, chanting, banging the roof, creating havoc. For twenty minutes, we didn’t move. The Milan fans were getting irate.

“Because of you, we miss match.”

Corrective action was needed. It was around 7.45pm. We stepped outside and tried to get a cab. But this was hopeless. Hundreds of Chelsea got off here too. They disappeared into the night. At about eight o’clock, we realised we needed a Plan B.

“Right, back downstairs. Let’s see if the trains are running now.”

Bizarrely, the Milan fan that was so irate with all of us was still on the platform. This was odd. Eventually at around 8pm, a new train arrived. This was full of Milan fans; not a bad sign. They knew the timings. They were absolutely full of song too. And in good spirits. They loved our Cucarella chant and repeated it back to us. Most were wearing Milan colours, as had many that we had seen around the city. The dress-code of the late ‘eighties in Italy of jeans, green bomber jackets, scarves and boots – especially the Inter lot – was clearly no more.

There were many songs lauding the rossoneri and one linking interisti to “vaffanculo.”

Our “Oh Thiago Silva” was met with smiles.

Just as the train rumbled into the San Siro stop – newly built, or at least since my last visit – I turned to the nearest Milanista and said “good luck” and he smiled. We shook hands.

I had always approached San Siro from Lotto to the north so I was a little discombobulated.

We were marched west, right past where my car had been parked earlier, and we began the slow march in to the away section. Our ticket was cross-referenced with our passport. Further in, there was a predictable altercation with a couple of stewards who wanted me to take my pocket camera – I had left my SLR at home, I am no fool – back to “bus.”

Oh Christ. Here we go again.

There was no bus. My car was half-an-hour away.

I pleaded that it was just a “piccolo machina” and they thankfully let me in.

“But – no photo in stadio.”

I replied : “sure, OK!”

I thought : “Yeah, right, sunshine.”

It was about 8.40pm.

PD and Parky, hobbling, were allowed access to the lift. I tried to join them but was not allowed in. Instead, the slow ascent up the helix. It was fine, thank heavens. The old ticker wasn’t grumbling at all.

Inside, our area – the upper third tier, green zone – was near packed to capacity. I could go left into the centre or right to the end where I guessed there would be more empty seats. I chose right. After just five or six steps up, I spotted PD and Parky right next to the aisle.

4,300 Chelsea in one tier and we were together again.

Result.

Georg and Petr were just a few feet away too.

Relax.

This looked a full house; 75,000? Superb. Chelsea fans kept arriving, some way into the game. The stadium was as I remembered it. I looked over at the southern end and imagined myself there in 1987 and 1990.

What would the 1987 me have made of all this? Or the 1986 me for that matter?

1986 Chris : “Wonder if I will ever see Chelsea play here?”

2022 Chris : “Yes. Yes you will.”

1986 Chris : When?”

2022 Chris: “Not until 2022.”

1986 Chris : “2022? I’ll be an old man by then.”

2022 Chris : “Steady now.”

1986 Chris : “So, that must mean in European competition? That must mean we will win something?!”

2022 Chris : “We will win plenty.”

1986 Chris: “Tell me! No wait. Don’t. That will spoil the surprise.”

2022 Chris : “That’s my boy.”

Graham Potter, what a journey he is on, chose this team :

Kepa

Chalobah – Silva – Koulibaly

James – Kovacic – Jorginho – Chilwell

Mount – Sterling

Aubameyang

There was a mosaic…nothing great, just “Let’s Go Milan”; like something an American high school teacher might say to a basketball team. It hardly referenced Milan’s illustrious European pedigree or used words to inspire.

The lights dimmed a little. Then the anthem, the fluttering of the logo on the centre-circle. The teams lined up. Chelsea were to play in all white. I was just pleased that I couldn’t see the insipid jade green / light blue hoops.

To me, it referenced the all-white that we wore in 1966.

On more than one occasion, a thought fluttered inside me :

“Ron Harris has played here twice.”

The Milan kit looked virtually all black from row 88. It was a poor kit. I much preferred the 1988 version.

Ooh those white shorts and white socks, eh Ruud?

Just before kick-off, I couldn’t resist a short burst of venom.

“MILAN MILAN VAFFANCULO.”

And you Milan John, you can vaffanculo too.

The game began and Milan, attacking us in the North Curv – OK, it’s not a curve, but it’s what the Italians call an end – where the strongest over the first ten minutes or so. Leao danced and shuffled his feet a few times. I had a feeling that if we denied him, we would have a chance.

For all of the singing and chanting in Navigli and on the metro, I didn’t think we were in particularly fine voice.

After some exchanges, the game altered direction irrevocably on twenty minutes. Reece James threaded a fine pass into Mason Mount. Inside the box, the midfielder tried his best to get a shot away but his effort was booted clear by Tatarusanu. I was concentrating on his efforts to shoot so wasn’t looking specifically at Tomori’s rough intervention.

To our joy, the referee signalled a penalty. A huge roar from us. There were protestations from Milan, but the referee was unmoved. Jorginho, to his credit, walked away with the ball and stood yards from the melee of Milan players hounding the referee. Eventually, he approached the spot. Again, a long wait. Jorginho took forever. My camera was poised. Our midfielder took so long that I had visions of my lens retracting.

He approached the ball.

Click.

The ‘keeper went right.

The ball went left.

Shades of Munich.

GET IN.

My dear friend Alan was unable to travel out for this game but I heard his voice from afar.

“THTCAUN.”

“COMLD.”

Wow. We were 1-0 up at the San Siro.

But still one song dominated…

“Oh Dennis Wise…”

I smirked when I remembered another memory in Italy not so long after this Milan moment. In December 1999, I travelled out for the lacklustre 0-0 draw with Lazio. A certain left-back missed a sitter late on and this – admittedly short-lived – chant was sung :

“Babayaro. Missed a fucking great goal. With one minute to go. In the Olimpico.”

Anyone remember that?

I really don’t know how I missed it, but it soon became apparent that Milan were down to ten men. There was a little ripple of acknowledgement in our area; it seemed that I wasn’t the only one that had missed it. I suppose we were all too busy celebrating the penalty decision.

Superb.

Olivier Giroud headed wide down below us and Milan seemed upset and ill-at-ease.

A really fine move carved open the Milan defence on thirty-four minutes. Mateo Kovacic played a ball in to Mount, who flicked it beautifully wide and into space. We had the glorious sight of both Raheem Sterling and Pierre-Emerick Abameyang free and with just the ‘keeper to beat.

Surely?

Aubameyang slotted it low past the Milan ‘keeper.

He ran down into the corner and although I had missed taking a photo of the goal, at least I captured the joyous celebrations.

We were winning 2-0 at the San Siro.

OH MY FUCKING GOODNESS.

This was magnificent stuff.

There was a fine chance for Mount in the closing moments of the first-half. His nimble turn allowed him to poke a low shot goal wards, but the Milan ‘keeper got down low to turn it around the post.

On forty minutes, purely planned to the minute, around fifty huge flags behind the opposite goal were waved and their presence lasted for the rest of the game. It was some sight.

It was a wonderful to see the place packed to the rafters. Bizarrely, two central sections in the middle of both upper tiers were unused though. Maybe there was a problem with egress from these lofty locations. The tiers go on forever at San Siro. And the huge roof hovers over everything. There is hardly a more stunning stadium in the whole of Europe. It is certainly supremely photogenic.

I was in heaven.

I was so far up, I might as well have been.

At the break, disbelief in the North Curv.

Graham Potter made a change at the break.

Conor Gallagher replaced the really excellent Mason Mount. We guessed he was saving Mason for later games. I had liked the energy of Mateo Kovacic and the calming positional play of Jorginho in that first-half. To be fair, all our players had been magnificent.

An early, seemingly easy enough, chance came to Gallagher who rounded the ‘keeper after a fine forward run from Trevoh Chalobah but his effort went wide, striking the side netting amidst groans from the 4,300.

We were easily the more accomplished team as the half progressed. We had a few half-chances.

The manager rang some changes.

Cesar Azpilicueta for James.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek for Sterling.

Positions were moved around. I tried my best to work it all out.

Our possession football – cheered with many an “olé” – must have tired Milan out. We looked relaxed and purposeful in everything we did.

There was a strong run from Loftus-Cheek, at his best, but his pass to Aubameyang resulted in a miss-cue. But our chances greatly out-weighed those of the home team.

Two late changes.

Kai Havertz for Aubameyang

Marc Cucarella for Chilwell

The Milan fans raised the roof with ten minutes to go with the loudest chant of the night. If I had to choose, I would always go for Inter over Milan, but their fans really impressed me over the two games.

Our fans by now were only chanting sporadically. As far as I can recall, there was not one single moment when the entire tier was singing as one. It was almost as if this was too easy. Especially with Milan playing with only ten men. It was an odd feeling. I thought back to all those great players to have worn the red and black stripes over the past forty years and this current team, despite being the current champions, are surely a pale shadow of the great Milan teams.

Baresi. Costacurta. Baggio. Van Basten. Ronaldinho. Shevchenko. Donadoni. Maldini. Ancelotti. Rijkaard. Papin. Pirlo. Kaka. Nesta. Seedorf. Ibrahimovic. Inzaghi. Gullit.

Mamma mia.

The game ended.

Milan 0 Chelsea 2.

What a fantastic result.

On the drive up to London last week, ahead of the Milan home game, if somebody had said that we would win both games with an aggregate score of Chelsea 5 Milan 0, nobody would have believed it.

Certainly not 1986 Chris.

Fackinell.

We were kept in for about forty-five minutes at the end of the game. We popped into the nearby snack bar which was surprisingly still open and I devoured a lemon iced-tea. I was allowed access to the lift this time.

The three of us slowly made our way back to Lampugnano; it was a thirty-five-minute walk. Halfway back, quite a way from San Siro, two trucks were still selling food.

“A burger, an iced tea and a Red Bull.”

The first two were soon demolished. The third would be consumed on the drive back to Turin.

There was a little chat with a Chelsea fan. I commented that there just didn’t seem to be that wanton euphoria that no doubt was in evidence at the 1999 “Dennis Wise” game. That it was all a bit subdued.

We agreed that the two clubs were at different stages in 1999 and 2022.

1999 : Chelsea as European novices, Milan as European royalty.

2022 : Chelsea as seasoned European competitors, Milan as a faded club.

I made relatively good time on my return to Piedmont from Lombardy. I set off at 1am, I was parked up outside the apartment at 3am.

Wednesday was another relaxing day. I was up early, though, at 7am to return the motor at 8am. It had been a magnificent adventure along the Italian A4. We checked out of the apartment after a light breakfast. There was time for a few beers in the city centre and a magnificent meal to boot. Callum joined us and we shared a cab to Caselle in order to catch the evening flight home.

There was even time to nab a couple of bargains at the Robe di Kappa shop at the airport.

“Paninaro, oh oh oh.”

I thankfully fell asleep for an hour on the flight back to Gatwick.

One young Chelsea fan was full of enthusiasm about the game. There had been a noticeably large contingent of youngsters out there. This is fantastic to see.

“That was my first ever away game.”

“In Europe?”

“No, the first ever. I just can’t get access to tickets for away games.”

This amazed me.

But it amazed 1986 Chris even more.

“My first away game was Bristol Rovers. His is Milan? Mamma mia.”

I eventually got home – the M3 closed, part of the M4 closed – at 1am on Thursday morning.

Next up, Villa away on Sunday. See you there.

1987

1990

2022

Tales From Difficult Shapes And Passive Rhythms

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Chris Axon

Everton vs. Chelsea : 6 August 2022.

My summer had been quiet. I never fancied another CFC tour to the US during the close-season, and there was no holiday abroad to excite me. It was simply a case of staying at home, saving pennies and attempting to relax from the burden of work which was as busy as ever. The highlight of my summer season was a little burst of gigs involving some music from my youth; Tom Robinson, Tears For Fears, Stiff Little Fingers and China Crisis. Waiting in the wings in September are Altered Images and Toyah. It will be 1982 all over again and that is never a bad thing.

The summer was also short. The gap between the last game of 2021/22 to the opening match of the new season was a brief ten weeks. As time passed, I became increasingly bored with the constant tittle-tattle of rumour and counter rumour regarding our transfer targets. I realised how much I disliked the mere mention of the name Fabrizio Romano; nobody likes a smart arse. I again squirmed every time fan after fan, supporter after supporter, FIFA nerd after FIFA nerd used the phrase “done deal” without transfers being completed. Once players sign, then we can talk.

Maybe it’s an age thing but sometimes I feel that I am from another footballing planet compared to a lot of our support.

Our season would open up in a grand fashion. To start, my favourite away stadium with a trip to Everton’s Goodison Park and then what I would class as our biggest home game with the visit of Tottenham. Two absolute belters. Early on in the campaign there would also be visits to Leeds United, Southampton and Fulham. These are three cracking away trips too. But the downside of this opening burst of away games is that we only just visited Everton, Leeds and Southampton very recently. Could the league computer not have spaced the buggers out a bit?

As the new season approached, I was inevitably concerned that my enthusiasm levels weren’t at especially high levels, but this is so often the case. I often find that I need the season to begin for me to get fully back into the swing of things. But my indifference to the new campaign actually shocked me this summer.

I was faced with the age-old question: was my love of the game waning? It’s a strange one. Many aspects of the modern game leave me cold. So cold. Yet I lap up the chance to attend live matches. There is the old cliché about football – Chelsea – being my drug and I can’t dispute this. Perhaps I should add that my summer season included four Frome Town friendlies, my most ever.

Football, eh?

I hate you but I love you too.

The alarm was set for the new season at 5.30am. By 7.30am I had collected the Fun Boy Three – PD, GG and LP – and we were on our way once again.

I made good progress. After picking up PD at 7am, I had deposited the three of them outside “The Thomas Frost” boozer on Walton Road just south of Goodison only four hours later. It was surely my quickest-ever journey up to Merseyside.

While my fellow travelling companions settled down for five or more hours of supping, I began a little tour around the city, one that I had been promising myself for ages. It was also time for a little more introspection.

This would be my fiftieth consecutive season of attending Chelsea games – 1973/74 to 2022/23, count’em up – even though my fiftieth anniversary will not be until March 2024. Additionally, this would be the fifteenth season that I been writing these blogs. Long gone are the viewing figures of when these were featured on the Chelsea In America bulletin board, but these are such a part of my match-going routine now and I can’t give them up. However, over the summer one of my close friends, Francis, suggested that I should take a year out of match photography and blogging. Just to give myself a rest. An average blog takes four hours of my time. But the look that I gave him probably shocked him to the core.

“Nah. It’s what I do mate.”

I will be honest, I did go over the options in my mind though.

But here I am. Writing away. Taking photos.

I hope that I still maintain the will to keep doing this for a while yet. With the rumours of us partaking in a partial rebuild of Stamford Bridge under the new Todd Boehly regime, I have to continue on until that is finished surely? The success of the Roman Abramovich era might never be matched but there is always something to write about at Chelsea.

On we go.

On my own now, I edged my car south and west towards the River Mersey. Within five minutes, I was parked up a few hundred yards away from the construction site of the new Everton Stadium at Bramley Moore Dock. Camera in hand, I set off to record the progress being made.

I hopped up onto a small wall to gain a good vantage point of the overall scene. This would be photo number one of the season.

Snap.

On leaping down from the wall, my legs crumpled and I fell.

Splat.

The camera and spare lens went flying. My knees – my fucking knees! – were smarting. I was sure I had torn my jeans. There was blood on my right hand. What a start to the season’s photographs. I dusted myself down, then let out a huge laugh.

The first fackinell of the season? Oh yes.

One photo taken and carnage.

Ha.

I limped further along Boundary Street and spent a good twenty minutes or so taking it all in. I found it rather funny that a bold sign warned against site photography and sharing images on social media. During my spell there, around fifteen other lads – not being sexist, they were all lads – called by to take some photos too. I am not ashamed to say that I have recently subscribed to two YouTube channels that provide drone updates of the construction sites at Bramley Moore and also Anfield.

I love a stadium, me.

So, the scene that I was witnessing was indeed pretty familiar. The skeletal shell of the new stadium is rising with the two end stands – the south and north – being the first to pierce the sky alongside the murky grey of the famous river. There are seven cranes covering the site. Maybe those lads were just crane spotters.

I must admit it looks a glorious setting for a new stadium. Evertonians – like me, no doubt – will hate the upheaval of moving out of good old Goodison in a couple of years, but the move represents the chance to level up the playing field with their more moneyed neighbours at the top of the hill up on Stanley Park. I had a fear that last season’s visit to Goodison would be my last. I believe that the new stadium is slated to open up during the 2024/25 campaign.

There was a chance – with Everton likely to flirt with relegation again perhaps – that this day would mark my last ever visit to Goodison.

I hoped not.

I have a personal history with this stadium that I have often mentioned.

I marched back to the car and then drove south towards the city centre. I immediately passed a huge derelict warehouse – a tobacco warehouse I believe – and I had visions of the red brick structure being upgraded to a hotel to take care of the new match day traffic that the new stadium would attract.

But I then heard a voice inside my head, of my mate Chris, a staunch Evertonian.

“Chris lad, all our support comes from Merseyside, The Wirral, the new towns, out to the North Wales coast, we don’t have any day trippers, la.”

I continued on. I have driven around the city centre – or at least the area by the Albert Dock – on many occasions but the scale of the Liver Building knocked me for six. What a building. It’s magnificent. But I drove past it – I spotted a massive bar called “Jurgen’s” – and headed up the hill inland. For many years, ten or more, I have wanted to visit the two cathedrals in the city. This was as perfect a day as any to get this accomplished.

I parked outside the massive Anglican Cathedral on St. James Mount. The sandstone used immediately reminded me of the stone used on the tunnels approaching Lime Street – and the “Cockneys Die” graffiti – and of Edge Hill Station on that first-ever visit to the city for football in May 1985. The building is huge. It is the longest cathedral in the world. I popped inside as a service was taking place. The visitors – there were many – walked around in hushed tones. A few photographs were inevitably taken.

I then headed north and then west and aimed for the second of the city’s great cathedrals, or the fourth if the cathedrals at either end of Stanley Park are included, the Metropolitan Cathedral. This Roman Catholic cathedral – made of concrete in the ‘sixties – sits at Mount Pleasant.

Hope Street links the two religious buildings. It looked a very lively place with theatres and eateries. I dived into the granddaddy of all Liverpool’s pubs, The Philharmonic, famous the world over for the elaborate porcelain fittings in the gents. More photographs followed both inside and out of the funkier of the two cathedrals – nicknamed “The Mersey Funnel” and “Paddy’s Wigwam” – and I was lost in my own world for a few moments.

The art deco Philharmonic Hall looked a magnificent site. The TV tower in the city centre was spotted between a canopy of green leaves. There were blue skies overhead. The Liver Birds could be seen peaking over some terraced rooftops. A few hen parties were making Hope Street their own. Maybe on another visit to the city, I will investigate further.

But it was time to move on. I dabbed a CD on as I pulled out of the car park – China Crisis’ Gary Daly’s solo album “Luna Landings”- a 2020 issue of some synth tracks recorded in the ‘eighties – and it was just perfect.

My route took me past some old, and grand, Georgian houses no doubt once owned by the cream of Liverpool’s entrepreneurs, businessmen and traders when a full forty percent of global trade came through the port of Liverpool. But it then took me past Edge Hill, and onto Tue Brook – past the drinking dens of “The Flat Iron” and “The Cabbage Hall” of match days at Anfield in previous years – and everything was a lot more down-at-heal, the Liverpool of hackneyed legend.

At around 3pm I was parked up in Stanley Park. Up to my left, the extension of the Annie Road Stand at Anfield was in full flow. It will bring the capacity up to 61,000. The new Everton one will be just under 53,000.

Ouch, la.

I popped into “The Thomas Frost” – my least favourite football pub – and located the lads, who had been joined by Deano and Dave, plus a cast of what appeared to be thousands. A friend, Kim, had not been able to attend due to COVID so her ticket was passed on to another pal, Sophie. The chaps had witnessed the Fulham and Liverpool 2-2 draw, and PD was shocked at the hatred that the watching Evertonians showed their local rivals.

Heysel robbed Evertonians of a tilt at European glory and it is not forgotten by many.

A song for Marc Cucarella was aired by the younger element. It would become the song of the day.

I excused myself and squeezed out of the boozer.

This particular corner of Liverpool, along the Walton Road, is a classic pre-match location for Everton home games. “The Thomas Frost”, “The Clock”, “The Party Pad” and “St. Hilda’s” are close, and drinkers from both clubs were inside and outside all of them. At just gone 4pm, my friends – and brothers – Tommie (Chelsea) and Chris (Everton) approached “St. Hilda’s” and it was glorious to see them again.

Here was the reason why we go to football.

Lads enjoying a laugh, a catch-up, a bevvy.

I was welcomed by the Evertonians that I met outside the pub. I loved it.

This is football.

Chris was in the middle of a punk festival – “Rebellion” – up the road in Blackpool and so was now mixing up his twin passions. The brothers are off to watch Stiff Little Fingers together in Dublin over the next few weeks. That 1982 vibe again. Both of the brothers helped me plan my Buenos Aires adventure a few years back and we all love our travel / football addiction.

We briefly mentioned previous encounters. This was the first time that we had begun a league season at Everton in my living memory, though there had been opening games at Stamford Bridge in 1995 – Ruud Gullit’s league debut, a 0-0 draw – and also way back in 1978. The earlier game – a 0-1 home loss – was memorable for two of my pre-match friends in 2022. It was Glenn’s first ever Chelsea game and he still rues a miss by Ray Wilkins. It was also Chris’ first visit to Stamford Bridge with Everton. I spoke about it with him. It has gone down in Chelsea folklore as being the “High Street Kensington” game, when Chelsea ambushed Everton’s mob at that particular tube station. This inspired the infamous “Ordinary To Chelsea” graffiti outside Lime Street, aimed at uniting both sets of fans to travel together to Stamford Bridge for the Liverpool league fixture later in the season. The graffiti is so iconic that sweatshirts are being produced featuring the image almost fifty years later.

Time was again moving on.

Chris and I sauntered off to opposite ends of the Bullens Road.

I left him with a parting shot.

“Up The Fucking Toffees.”

He smiled.

“Up The Fucking Toffees.”

The kick-off was at 5.30pm and I was inside at around 4.45pm or so.

At last, I had a seat that wasn’t tucked way past the goal-line. In fact, it was right on the goal-line. Compared to previous visits my seat 38 felt as if I was watching from the royal box. John from Paddington now sits with Alan, Gary, Parky and little old me at away games now; the Fantastic Five. I looked over at the Park End; Everton had handed out tons of royal blue flags for their fans to wave. I heard Chris’ voice once again.

“Typical Kopite behaviour.”

I hoped that the ground would be full of shiny unhappy people by the end of the game.

John asked me for my prediction.

I thought for a few seconds and went safe : “0-0.”

It was time to reacquaint myself with more than a few friends as the kick-off time approached. I had recently seen Julie and Tim at the SLF gig in Frome. And I had shared a fine evening with Kev in Aberdare at the recent China Crisis gig.

“From Abu Dhabi to Aberdare” anyone?

Kev, in fact, was wearing a China Crisis T-shirt. I had joked on the night that I would wear my exact same copy to the game too, but I had forgotten all about that. Probably just as well, eh Kev?

We could work out the starting line-up from the drills taking place in front of us. The confirmation came on the twin TV screens at opposite ends of the ground.

Mendy

Dave – Silva – Koulibaly

James – Jorginho – Kante – Chilwell

Mount – Havertz – Sterling

In light of our former chairman’s departure, I am surprised that nobody else but me did the “$ out, £ in” joke over the summer.

The PA ramped up the volume with a few Everton favourites, and then the stirring “Z Cars” rung out around Goodison.

It was unchanged as it has been from around 1994.

The rather mundane and bland single-tier of the Park Lane to my left. The still huge main stand, double-decked, sloping away in the top left corner. St’ Luke’s Church peeping over the TV screen in the opposite corner and then the continuous structure of the Gwladys Street bleeding into the Bullens Road, the Leitch cross-struts on show for decades but not for much longer.

A couple of large banners were paraded in the Gwladys Street.

To the left, an image of The Beatles with an Everton scarf wrapped around them all. Were they really all Evertonians? Well, they weren’t day trippers, that’s for sure.

I hoped that their team would be The Beaten.

To the right, there was an image of our Frank on a banner. Gulp.

The teams lined-up.

A shrill noise.

Football was back.

Alas we were back in the odd away kit. From a long way away, it looks reasonable, but up close I can’t say I am too fond of the stencilled lion nonsense on the light blue / turquoise hoops. This overly fussy design, which is mirrored in the collar of the home kit, resembles a great aunt’s frock design from 1971 far too much for my liking.

Me, bored rigid on a family outing, stifling yawns :“Yes, I’d love another piece of fruit cake please auntie”…but thinking “your dress looks ridiculous.”

To be honest, in the pre-release glimpses, the colour looked more jade green than blue. Eck from Glasgow, sat to my left, must have been having kittens.

Both teams were wearing white shorts. I think that ruling has changed only recently.

The game began. I was immediately warned by a sweaty steward to not use my camera. In the ensuing moments, Eck leant forward and shielded my illicit pursuits. It worked a treat.

As the game started to develop, the away crowd got behind the team, but with the lower tier of the Bullens outdoing the top tier. I must admit I didn’t sing too much during the whole game; I am getting old, eh? Soon into the game, I experienced chant envy as I couldn’t make out the Koulibaly song being sung with gusto in the lower deck.

Goodison has been an awful venue for us of late. Our record was of four consecutive losses.

But we began as we often began with the majority of possession.

The first real incident involved Kai Havertz who picked up a wayward clearance from Jordan Pickford after a poor back pass from Ben Godfrey. Rather than pass inside, he lashed the ball against the side netting. Attempting to tackle, Godfrey injured himself and there was a delay of many minutes before he was stretchered off.

There was a swipe from Mason Mount that Jordan Pickford managed to claw away. At the other end, a deep cross from Vitaly Mykolenko was headed goal wards by James Tarkowski but Edouard Mendy did ever so well to tip it over.

Everton occasionally threatened, but our defence – the veteran Dave especially – were able to quell their advances. N’Golo Kante, right after a Chelsea attack, was able to block an Everton shot back in his own penalty area. He had no right to be there. The man was starting the season as our strongest player.

Next up, Thiago Silva – the calm and cool maestro – cut out an Everton break down our right, and this drew rapturous applause.

A shot from Kante was fumbled by Pickford but although Raheem Sterling pounced to score – a dream start? – he was ruled offside. It looked offside to me, way down on the other goal line. Who needs cameras?

To be truthful, despite corner after corner (or rather shite corner after shite corner) that resulted in a few wayward headers, it wasn’t much of a half. The home fans were quiet, and the away section in the upper tier were getting quieter with each passing minute.

But corner after corner were smacked into the Everton box.

“More corners than a Muller warehouse.”

I noticed that the movement off the ball was so poor.

I chatted to Eck : “Without a target man, our forwards need to be constantly moving, swapping over, pulling defenders away, allowing balls into space.”

There was sadly none of it. I couldn’t remember two white-shirted players crossing over the entire half.

I had visions of a repeat of the dull 0-0 at Stoke City that began the 2011/12 campaign.

In injury time, Abdoulaye Doucoure manhandled Ben Chilwell on a foray into the box. It looked a clear penalty to me.

Jorginho.

1-0

Alan : “They’ll have to come at us now, like.”

Chris : “Come on my little diamonds, like.”

It was the last kick of the half. Phew.

As the second-half began, the sun was still beating down on us in the upper tier. I was getting my longest exposure to the sun of the entire summer. But the game didn’t really step up. The noise continued to fall away. If anything, Everton threatened much more than us in the second-half.

A shot from Demarai Gray – after a mess up between Silva and Mendy – was thankfully blocked by our man from Senegal.

Celery was tossed around in the away section and some local stewards looked bemused.

Some substitutions.

Christian Pulisic for a very quiet Mount.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek for Chilwell.

Reece swapped wings and Ruben played wide right.

It was pretty grim and pretty tepid stuff this. A tough watch.The practised attacking patterns needed more work. It just wasn’t gelling at all. And during that second-half we allowed Everton a little too much space in key areas. It is early days though. But I have to say it as I saw it.

I could lose myself in this honesty.

More substitutions from Thomas Tuchel.

Armando Broja for a weak Havertz.

Marc Cucarella for Koulibaly.

I wasn’t too happy about us singing Frank’s name during the game.

It took bloody ages for us to get an effort, any effort, on goal. It came on eighty-one minutes, a James free-kick, tipped over. Then, just after a pass from Cucarella to Sterling and a shot deflected for a corner.

To be fair, Pulisic looked keen when he came on and added a new dimension to our play. Cucarella looked mustard too. He looked neat, and picked out a few lovely passes, zipped with pace.

“He’s from Marbella, he eats Bonjela” wasn’t it?

And it was a joy to see Broja on the pitch, charging into space, taking defenders with him, a focal point. I hope he is given a full crack of the whip this season.

In the eighth minute of extra time, Conor Gallagher made his debut and I caught his first touch, at a free-kick, on camera. I see great things for him.

It ended 1-0.

Outside, I bumped into Sophie, with Andy her father, and remembered that she was soon off to Milan, with a side-visit to Como after talking to me in the pub at the end of last season.

“Did you know Dennis Wise is the CEO at Como?”

It made Sophie’s day. Dennis is her favourite ever Chelsea player.

We walked back to the waiting car and shared a few thoughts about the game. It was no classic, but we were all relieved with the win. Tottenham, our next opponents, won 4-1 at home to Southampton and I admitted to PD :

“I’m dreading it.”

“I am too.”

Out

I made good time on the way south, only for us to become entrenched in a lively conversation about all of the players’ performances just as I should have veered off the M6 and onto the M5.

“Isn’t that the Alexander Stadium? Bollocks, I have missed the turning.”

A diversion through the second city was a pain, but I was eventually back on track. As the three passengers fell asleep, I returned to the ‘eighties and Gary Daly.

And I wondered what I should call this latest blog.

Some people think it’s fun to entertain.

Tales From Boxing Day 1996 And Boxing Day 2021

Posted on December 30, 2021 by Chris Axon

Aston Villa vs. Chelsea : 26 December 2021.

We don’t always play on Boxing Day, but when we do it’s usually at Stamford Bridge. However, for once this was going to be a rare trip to the Midlands for this particular festive fixture and that suited me. Sometimes Boxing Day fixtures at Stamford Bridge, especially the dreaded early kick-offs, can be eerily quiet affairs.

Back when I was younger, attending Boxing Day football was fraught with logistical problems. I didn’t see my first Boxing Day Chelsea game until as late as 1992 when, at last with a car to drive, I made my way up from deepest Somerset to see us play Southampton at home.

Since then, I haven’t attended every Boxing Day game; most but not all.

However, the game at Villa Park on Boxing Day 2021 would only be the fourth away game out of twenty Boxing Day fixtures that I would have watched. The league computer certainly favours us to play at Stamford Bridge on this most traditional of footballing days. We missed out on an away game at Arsenal last year; and that was probably just as well.

I set off at around 9.15am but instead of heading off to collect PD, Glenn and Parky, I was headed due south for half an hour to collect Donna in Wincanton, a town in Somerset that I rarely visit. I fuelled up, then drove through Bruton and I soon realised that unless we play Yeovil Town in the FA Cup it’s unlikely that I would ever take this road to see Chelsea ever again. It was mightily heavy with fog as I crept past the Wincanton Race Course, opening up for its annual Boxing Day Meet. I collected Donna at 10am, then made a bee-line for Frome. I’ve known Donna for a while – I spent some time with her and some other friends in Porto in May – but even though I had seen her at various Chelsea games over the past ten years or so, I only found out from Parky that Wincanton was her home relatively recently.

Donna’s first ever Chelsea game was a pre-season fixture against Bristol City in 1995 just after Ruud Gullit signed for us. I remember that I eagerly travelled down to Devon to see us play Torquay United and Plymouth Argyle during the week before the game in Bristol on the Sunday. Supporters of our club that were not around in the summer of 1995 will, I think, struggle to comprehend the excitement that surrounded the Gullit signing. It absolutely thrilled us all. We both remembered it as a swelteringly hot day – we drew 1-1 – and Donna reminded me that for a long period during the pre-match “kick in”, our new Dutch superstar wandered around the pitch talking on his mobile phone. It just felt that only he would ever be allowed such a privilege.

Twenty-six years ago and a Chelsea pre-season tour in the West of England.

I can’t see that ever happening again, eh?

The first Chelsea away game that I attended on a Boxing Day was at Villa Park too; in 1996/97, a nice 2-0 win, two goals from Gianfranco Zola , and I even won some money on him as the first scorer. Our lovely “1997 FA Cup Final” season was just gaining momentum and times were good, now with a team including Gianluca Vialli, Gianfranco Zola and with Ruud Gullit now as the player-manager. The greatest of times? It absolutely felt like it.

Only the previous April we had assembled at Villa Park for an ultimately agonising FA Cup semi-final with Manchester United; the memory of walking back to my parking spot amidst a sea of United fans haunts me to this day.

But Boxing Day 1996 was a cracking day out; twenty-five years ago to the day. Blimey. File under “where does the time go?” alongside many other games.

I collected the remaining passengers and we were on our way. There was fog, but not as heavy as on the trip up the same M5 to Wolverhampton a week earlier. I made good time and I pulled into the car park of “The Vine”, tucked under the M5 at West Bromwich, for the second time in a week at bang on 1pm. We had enjoyed our meal there so much after the Wolves game that we had decided to do so again.

“The Vine” – good food, a quiet chat, a few drinks – would do for us.

Curries and pints were ordered. Chelsea tales were remembered. Three hours flew past. A trip to Villa Park was long overdue. It has been a mainstay on our travels for decades, but the last visit was as long ago as April 2016 when Pato scored. We remembered that, ironically, I had plans to take Donna to Villa Park for our game in March 2020 – Donna had broken her wrist and was unable to drive – but of course that game was the first one to be hit by the lockdown of two seasons ago. Like me, Donna kept the tickets for that game on her fridge as a reminder that, hopefully, football would be back in our lives again.

It didn’t take me long to drop my four passengers off near Villa Park before I doubled-back on myself and parked up on the same street that I have been using for years and years. We used to drop into “The Crown And Cushion” pub on the walk to the stadium but that is no more; razed to the ground, only memories remain. We had mobbed up in that very pub for the Fulham semi-final in 2002; there is a photo from that day of a very young-looking Parky and a very young-looking me.

I stood outside the away end, a few “hellos” to some friends. I had a spare ticket but couldn’t shift it. Unperturbed, I made my way inside the Doug Ellis Stand. I was rewarded with a very fine seat; the very front row of the upper deck. Alas, Alan wasn’t able to attend again, but Gary and Parky were alongside me.

I dubbed it the “Waldorf & Statler” balcony.

Villa Park is a large and impressive stadium. I looked around at the familiar-again banners, flags, tiered stands and other architectural features. Was I last here almost six bloody years ago?

Tempus fugit as they say in Sutton Coldfield.

The stadium was full to near capacity. The players appeared from that quaint “off-centre” tunnel that Villa decided to keep as a motif from the old, and much-loved, Trinity Road stand of yore. Chelsea as Borrusia Dortmund again; yellow, black, yellow.

The team?

Mendy

Chalobah – Silva – Rudiger

James – Jorginho – Kante – Alonso

Hudson-Odoi – Pulisic – Mount

We were up against Ings, Mings and otherlings.

Let battle commence.

The first thing of note during the game was the realisation that I had forgotten to include a good four of five songs and chants from the Chelsea catalogue at Brentford on the previous Wednesday. I had mentioned thirty; a few friends had added a few more later, yet I was hearing some others too, repeated in The Midlands. It’s a fair assumption that the tally at Brentford must have reached forty.

I doubt if it has ever been bettered.

On the pitch, there were some early exchanges and Thiago Silva continued his lovely form from the previous Sunday at Wolves. The singing in the two-tiered Doug Ellis quietened down as our play deteriorated a little.

But we were still the loud ones.

“Shall we sing a song for you?” was robustly answered on around twenty minutes by the home fans in the North Stand, which was met with sarcastic clapping from the away section.

No surprises, we were dominating possession but Villa were looking decidedly useful when they countered with pace. A run and strike by Ollie Watkins was ably blocked by the nimble reactions of Trevoh Chalobah, and the away fans applauded.

We were having a little difficulty in building our attacks. Reece James struggled with crosses and gave away the occasional ball. From a wide position on the left, Mason Mount slung in a ball that tickled the crossbar; I am not sure if the attempt on goal was intentional.

Sadly, Villa themselves were breeching us too often for our liking. Just before the half-hour mark, a cross from Matt Targett was flicked on – in an effort to block the cross – by James. The ball spun up and over Mendy’s head and outreached arms. Our goalkeeper was stranded and the ball nestled in the net. Villa probably deserved their lead.

At that time, we were looking a little weak as an attacking threat, with only Kante – “imperious” the bloke next to me called him – living up to his billing. Callum Hudson-Odoi seemed as reticent as ever to take people on and Christian Pulisic just looked lost. Thankfully our response was quick and a little surprising. Marcos Alonso pushed the ball forward and Matty Cash lunged at Callum inside the box. It was an ugly challenge and a clear penalty.

Despite Martinez’ merry dance on the goal line, Jorginho rarely misses and he didn’t this time.

1-1.

Back in the game.

The first-half ended with a period of huff and puff with not much real quality.

At the break, the fifth cavalry appeared on the horizon. Although Chalobah had performed admirably, it was his place that was jeopardised in favour of Romelu Lukaku. Pulisic, out-fought and out-puzzled in a central attacking role “of sorts” was pushed back to right wing-back. Soon after the restart, Silva slowly walked off to be replaced by Andreas Christensen.

There is no doubt at all that the changes resulted in a noticeable improvement in our play, the vast majority of which seemed to take place down below us on our right wing. Pulisic looked a lot more potent and of course it was a huge advantage to have a target, a hit-man, a goal scorer on the pitch.

But there were the usual moans and grumbles when Hudson-Odoi fluffed a goal scoring opportunity in his favoured inside-left channel. However, those chastising our youngster were soon eating humble pie. His perfectly floated cross towards the incredible bulk of Lukaku just outside the six-yard box was nigh-on perfection. Our number nine lept and angled the ball past the Villa ‘keeper.

GETINYOUBASTARD.

Our play improved. We looked more confident, more at ease. There was greater intent.

On the hour, Mateo Kovacic replaced Kante and we hoped our little miracle-worker wasn’t badly hurt.

A fine long ball from Christensen played in Mount. He drew the ‘keeper on an angle but with two team mates in good positions, decided to go for goal. With the ‘keeper having over-run his challenge and in no man’s land, Mount’s effort didn’t hit the target. The ball kissed the side netting.

There were howls from the Chelsea support.

At the other end, a rare Villa attack and – if I am honest – a cumbersome challenge looked a definite penalty but we were saved by an offside flag.

A strong run from Lukaku eventually tee’d up Callum again. But this was followed with a weak finish but also an excellent low save from Martinez.

More howls.

Late, very late, in the game, I was poised with my camera as Lukaku started a chase to reach a ball pumped forward by Hudson-Odoi. I watched through my lens as he quickly made up ground on Targett, and raced past. The defender lost his footing and ended up stumbling around like a newly born fawn. Our striker raced on, seemingly ripping up the turf as he sprinted away. It was simply a glorious sight. It was an instant classic, a reminder of older days when strikers were unshackled and free. He advanced into the box, and I was preparing for a Roy Of The Rovers – or Hotshot Hamish – thunderbolt. Instead, Ezri Konsa took his legs away.

Another penalty.

We waited.

Jorginho again.

Goal.

Phew.

But that run from Lukaku. The highlight of the season? Possibly. More of the same please. The second half had been a fine turnaround. Everyone was happy. I kept saying “round pegs in round holes, square pegs in square holes” as we made our way down the many flights of stairs to street level.

As we all walked back to the car, a group of Chelsea fans were singing in the dark distant night.

“Oh what fun it is to see Chelsea win away…”

Boxing Day 1996.

Boxing Day 2021.

Tales From Good Old Chelsea

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Leeds United : 11 December 2021.

I have penned six-hundred-and-thirty-four of these match reports. Such has been Leeds United’s absence from the top flight in English football that not one of them has featured our oldest and nastiest rivals from South Yorkshire. There was one rare meeting in December 2012 – away in the League Cup – but I didn’t attend that one; it came just too soon after the World Club Cup in Tokyo. I was in no mood to make a lone trip north for a mid-week game. And then, just over a year ago, there was the high-water mark of Frank Lampard’s tenure as Chelsea manager, the 3-1 win at Stamford Bridge that took us to the top of the league, but there was a limited attendance for that one of around a few thousand. Recovering from my heart attack, it was a game I really wasn’t in a fit enough condition to attend. The return game at Elland Road in March had no spectators at all.

As I drove to London early on Saturday morning – a fleeting but beautiful sunrise over Salisbury Plain, a beguiling mix of orange and pink, was the memorable highlight – I pondered a few topics and angles to use in this blogorama. It soon dawned on me that many of our newer fans, of which there are utterly millions, have never witnessed the heated rivalry of a Chelsea and Leeds United league game at a packed Stamford Bridge stadium.

The last such occasion was in May 2004.

The last game of the season, Claudio Ranieri’s last game in charge, a 1-0 win for us, Goodnight Vienna, Goodbye Leeds. I watched that one in the West Lower, freeing up my ticket for Glenn’s mate Tomas from Berlin. A Jesper Gronkjaer goal gave us the points to secure a second place finish behind Arsenal. I wonder whatever happened to them?

But let’s go back further.

The first time that I saw Leeds United in person was in the Second Division in October 1982, a game with a phenomenally malevolent atmosphere before, during and no doubt after. Chelsea had been playing in the second tier since 1979, Leeds were newly-relegated. It seemed almost implausible, to my eyes and to others, that these two giants were now out of the top flight. But the thought of Chelsea playing Leeds, with me able to attend, certainly galvanised me during the close season. The anticipation was palpable. Throughout the previous campaign, our highest home attendance was 20,036. Yet this game smashed that; 25,358 attended and it no doubt drew in the hooligan element of which we had thousands. Leeds had signed off their long membership of the old First Division with a loss at West Brom, sending them down, and their equally notorious hooligans wrecked the away end as a parting gift.

I will not lie. In those days, football was often an afterthought in many attendees’ minds. It was all about “how many away fans, did they go in the seats, any trouble?”

Chelsea and Leeds.

Back against each other for the first time in three seasons.

It was a huge match.

I watched a dire 0-0 draw from The Shed, but can well remember the amazingly heated and noisy atmosphere. I can recollect the northern sections of The Benches and the Gate 13 section of the East Lower to be absolutely rammed with Herberts, goading the travelling thousands from the north in the middle two pens in the sweeping away terrace. How many did Leeds bring? I am not sure. Maybe 3,000, maybe more. There was a welcome and a warning on the front page of the programme for all Leeds fans; “don’t be a mug, don’t be a thug and help your club achieve greatness once again” but there were outbreaks of violence throughout the game.

I also vividly remember The Shed goading the away support :

“Did the (Yorkshire) Ripper get your Mum?”

Different, crazy, brutal times.

From that encounter in 1982/83 I was then able to watch every single Chelsea versus Leeds United league game until that match in 2003/04. This was a run of seventeen unbroken games, and for around ten of these I would always meet up with my college mate Bob, a Leeds season-ticket holder, who got to know my closest Chelsea mates in the pub before disappearing into the away section. Bob also came down to Stamford Bridge for the Liverpool game in 1986, the West Ham game in 1987 and went with me to Forest in 1987 and also to Old Trafford for the FA Cup game in 1988. I accompanied him to Elland Road to see West Brom in the last league game of 1986/87, and I remember smirking as the Leeds fans alongside me in the South Stand – hoolie central – sang about guns and Chelsea scum.

I wore it as a badge of honour that they sung about us when we weren’t even playing each other.

There were the blissful moments when our promotion from the old Second Division was reached in 1984 with a memorable 5-0 demolition of Leeds United at home, then the wonderful repeat in 1989 albeit with a narrower 1-0 win to secure promotion once again against the same opponents.

I can well remember meeting up with Bob, another college mate Trev who also followed Leeds, and my Rotherham United mate Ian, all of whom watched many of Leeds’ games as they closed in on the 1991/92 League Championship. We were sat in a pub in Worcester Park on an afternoon session after the season had finished, and the lads were reminiscing on a few of the games that had given Leeds the title, and not Manchester United. Because of my friendships with these lads, I was definitely in the Leeds corner as 1991/92 came to its conclusion. I just despised Manchester United in those days. Deep down, I still do. I remember asking Bob “what did it feel like when you won the game at Bramall Lane to win the league?” and the sub-text was undoubtedly “what will it feel like if Chelsea ever win the league?”

In the summer of 1992, Chelsea Football Club seemed light years away from silverware.

But I was genuinely happy for my Leeds mates; all lovely chaps, bless ‘em.

From relegation in 1982 to a Football League Championship – the last “real” one, and one with Eric Cantona playing for Leeds – was some turnaround.

Sitting in that pub on a warm summer day, I could not help but think back on that classic Second Division season of 1983/84 – arguably the strongest ever – when the five powerhouses of Chelsea, Leeds United, Manchester City, Newcastle United and Sheffield Wednesday faced-off. At the end of it all – my favourite ever season – Leeds, along with City, missed out on promotion. Yet here they were, finally promoted in 1990, winning the bloody league ahead of the other four. In fact, all four other protagonists had managed to get themselves relegated again since 1984.

The saying “whoever laughs last, laughs longest” never felt more applicable.

Our rivalry, of course, dates back specifically to 1970 – and arguably for a few seasons before it – but there was definitely a renaissance at certain times since. In the early ‘nineties, Leeds tended to have the upper hand over us, and I hated it. They beat us at Stamford Bridge in 1990/91 and 1991/92 and also in 1994/95, a horrible 0-3 loss.

But I remember a game in April 1996 too. I watched that game in the temporary seats of the Shed End alongside Rotherham Ian and his father too – a nice memory – while Bob and Trev were in the away section of the East Lower. Chelsea won 4-1 with Mark Hughes getting a lovely hat-trick; that must have annoyed the fuck out of the away fans. Sadly, the gate was only 22,000 at a time when our capacity was at the 31,000 mark. The gaping holes in the North Stand – yet to become The Matthew Harding – make my eyes smart. Sigh.

Leeds United were relegated at the end of that 2003/04 season. There was a certain amount of schadenfreude when their last game that season was at Stamford Bridge.

“Be off with you, and take your father’s gun too.” Or words to that effect.

In 2005, our erstwhile chairman Ken Bates took over as Leeds chairman and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The Leeds fans, to a man, woman and dog, definitely cried.

They eventually crawled back to the top flight of English football at the end of the 2019/20 season.

“What took you?”

There had been the usual pre-match at “The Eight Bells” with friends from near and far. For the first time, I approached Putney Bridge by car from the south side of the river and was able to drop Paul and Parky right outside the pub; door to door service indeed. By the time I had parked-up and then caught the tube to join them it was 10.30am. Gillian and Kev from Edinburgh were already with them; lucky enough to grab tickets from the ticket exchange at the last minute. They were not watching together though; Kev was in the MHU, Gillian was in the West Lower. Luke and then Aroha showed up, and also Courtney and Mike from Chicago. A few of the Kent lads sat at the bar. At last I was able to meet up with revered Chelsea author Walter Otton and it was a great pleasure to be able to personally thank him for his support in my endeavours over recent seasons.

There was talk of not only Chelsea but Leeds hiring boats to the game; a River Thames cruise apiece from out east to nearby Putney, across the river. I had visions of some bizarre medieval boating battle with jousting poles, or maybe a violent version of the university boat race (“with more than two cox”)

Outside the Fulham Broadway tube, I sensed the presence of a little mob of Leeds; just by their looks and stares. They were close by a line of police. We edged around them. By the time I had reached my seat in the MHU – with Gary talking about Leeds lads slapping a few Chelsea fans outside, unchallenged – I was absolutely ready for the football to begin.

The team?

Mendy

Azpilicueta – Silva – Rudiger

James – Jorginho – Loftus-Cheek – Alonso

Mount – Havertz – Werner

So, still no starting place for our number nine.

Leeds United were without Patrick Bamford, the former Chelsea youngster. Unlike on many occasions at Stamford Bridge, Leeds wore the all-white kit, albeit with some nasty luminous yellow socks. On quite a few times over the years they used to opt for the all yellow kit. There were three thousand Leeds fans in The Shed, but I didn’t spot a single flag nor banner.

The match began and, just like against the United of Manchester, we absolutely dominated the first quarter of an hour or so.

An early free-kick from Reece James went close but not close enough. It was all Chelsea. My usual match-going companion Alan was absent – COVID19 – so I was sat in his seat next to Clive. In my seat, a Chelsea fan from Scunthorpe.

There was a rising shot from Ruben Loftus-Cheek that crashed into the Shed Upper.

“They’ve hardly attacked us yet, mate.”

On thirteen minutes, a loud “Marching On Together” – their battle hymn – and soon after, Leeds enjoyed their first real attack. A shot from the lively Raphinha was blocked, but the Brazilian then forced a fine save from Mendy.

It’s interesting that the Mendy song did not make an appearance during the game. I am not sure that if there is an agreed-upon life-cycle of a chant at football, but this one is still in its infancy; heard at the densely-packed away terraces, but not yet widely-known enough to warrant a full-throttle rendition at Stamford Bridge. Yet.

There was a Leeds corner, and this elicited the other Leeds battle-cry which always follows the awarding of a Leeds corner.

“Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!”

Loud and original. I can’t fault that.

Thiago Silva was trying his best to orchestrate things, looking to float balls into space or to pick out runners. But it was a hard slog. There was little room in the final third.

Mid-way through the half, a loud chant from the away quadrant :

“Marcos Alonso. You should be in jail.”

This was answered by the Chelsea faithful with a typically antagonistic chant of our own aimed at a Leeds native. I don’t like even thinking about the man, let alone saying it, singing it, nor writing it.

The Alonso chant was repeated and almost without pause for thought, our left wing-back took a wild swipe at Daniel James. It was a clear penalty.

Raphinha’s stuttering run was almost against the spirit of the game, but Mendy took the bait. However, he seemed to collapse too soon and the Brazilian’s gentle prod to his right ended up a mere yard or so away from him.

Fackinell.

The Leeds fans roared, Rapinha wound up the MHL, game on.

On the half-hour, a very loud “Marching On Together” was met with an even louder “Carefree” and everything was alright with the world. At last, the atmosphere was simmering along nicely. But I couldn’t help saying to Clive “there’s a lack of invention and guile out there today.”

A few minutes later, the third Leeds battle cry of the day.

“We are the Champions, the Champions of Europe.”

This harks back to May 1975. A hotly disputed disallowed goal from Peter Lorimer and Leeds United would eventually lose the European Cup Final to Bayern Munich in Paris. I remember watching it on TV. They still feel aggrieved.

The Leeds fans still sing this almost fifty years later. Bloody hell, lads and lasses, let it go.

They must have hated seeing our “Champions Of Europe” signage on the West Stand if any of them got close to it.

With half-time approaching, sinner turned saint. Alonso won the ball on our left and played a brisk one-two with Timo Werner.

I whispered “(needs a) good cross Alonso”…and it was.

It flew low to the near post and Mason Mount whipped it home with one sweet swipe.

GET IN.

Soon after, a dipping free-kick from that man Alonso did not dip enough. Then the young Leeds ‘keeper Illan Meslier saved from Kai Havertz.

Chances had been rare and it was 1-1 at the break. There were no complaints with the score, but plenty of moans at the lack of quality in key areas.

We began a little brighter in the second-half but goal scoring chances were absolutely at a premium. Werner threatened a little, Havertz tried to link things together, but we missed a focal point.

Just before the half-hour mark, down below me, Raphinha slid in to prevent a raiding Antonio Rudiger cross. But the challenge was untidy and legs were tangled. Everyone yelled for a penalty. Some divs even yelled “VAR” which is anathema to me.

Penalty it was.

Jorginho.

A skip.

Goal.

Get in you beauty.

I snapped away like a fool.

At the other end, a very fine save from Mendy from James, but still no song. Silva messed up a great chance to further our lead and held his head in his hands. It wasn’t a great second-half, but we noted that Alonso improved as the game continued. He was always looking to get close to the man with the ball and on a number of occasions did just enough to help win the ball back.

Clive and I wondered if Tuchel might bolster the midfield and bring on Ross Barkley to bulk it up a little. Leeds were tending to swarm through us and we looked out of shape, physically and positionally.

Christensen for Azpilicueta.

Hudson-Odoi for Werner.

Then, a lightning bolt of an attack down the Leeds left and another low cross, a la Alonso, from in front of the East Lower. Joe Gelhardt arrived with perfect timing to knock the ball in past Mendy. The Leeds fans roared some more.

Bollocks.

In a seemingly desperate “last throw of the dice” moment, Lukaku replaced Alonso. There were three minutes to go, and then an extra five.

“COME ON CHELS.”

With ninety-four minutes played, and with Clive having headed for the exits a few minutes earlier, Rudiger again found himself in the Leeds United box. There was a half-hearted challenge from behind but my first thoughts were that Rudiger crumpled far too easily. I didn’t even appeal. I’d be no good at cricket. This one went to VAR again. Another positive decision. And a quicker decision, I think, this time.

Jorginho again.

Another skip.

In.

The winner.

GET IN YOU BEAUTY.

Chelsea 3 Leeds United 2.

It hadn’t been a great game in terms of quality. We had hardly peppered the Leeds goal. But it was certainly an old-fashioned battle which became more intriguing as the game developed. As I walked out of the MHU, there was one almighty melee occurring on the far side between the players of good old Chelsea and good old Leeds.

Some things don’t change, eh?

To be continued at Elland Road in April, no doubt.

Next up, Everton at home on Thursday. See you there.

1995/1996 : From The Shed.

2003/2004 : Joe And Jesper.

2021/22 : High Fives.

2021/22 : Chelsea Smiles.

2021/22 : The Winner.

Tales From Saturday And Sunday

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Chris Axon

Chelsea vs. Manchester United : 28 November 2021.

Chelsea drew 1-1 as the team failed to capitalise on almost total domination against a defence-minded Manchester United team on a bitterly cold afternoon at Stamford Bridge. The goals that were so forthcoming against Juventus in the previous home game never materialised and the points were shared when a penalty by Jorginho equalised a goal from Jadon Sancho that was scored earlier in the second-half.

Right, that’s the game sorted. What else happened?

Some numbers. The game against Manchester United was to be my twentieth match of the season. By the end of December, that total would – hopefully, health and lockdowns permitting – be up to twenty-eight. Starting against Watford on the Wednesday, December was going to be a very busy month indeed. And this obviously does not include the away game against Zenit, which may not even take place in St. Petersburg if the current rumours are true.

This would also be my seventy-seventh game against Manchester United.

“That’s more United games than all of my United acquaintances’ games combined.”

That’s almost a true story. My former college friend Rick, who occasionally gets a mention when we play at Old Trafford, is a season ticket holder at United and skews the figures. But apart from him, of the ten or so United fans that I know of, hardly any have seen United play more than a handful, at best, of times.

This was the second game in SW6 in six days. Juventus and Manchester United, eh? What a lovely double of home fixtures.

But first, a Saturday night in Old London Town. When I heard that my mate Jaro and his son Alex were coming over from the US for a week, we soon conjured up a plan to spend a little quality time with them around the United game. We would only see them for an hour at the Juventus match. I booked Parky, PD and yours truly into an apartment – a flat in usual parlance, right? – in Fulham for the Saturday night and I got to work on a pub-crawl in a part of town that would be new for all of us. I drove up to London in the early afternoon and thankfully the rumoured snow showers did not amount to anything. However, we were waylaid by some heavy traffic around Twickenham and didn’t get up to the apartment, where Lillie Road meets the Fulham Palace Road, until just after 2.30pm.

Not to worry, by 3.30pm we were sipping our first bevvies in a pub which we often spot on our drive-in to SW6 for match days.

“The Distillers” – on our walk to Hammersmith tube – and “The Duke Of Cornwall” – on our walk back to the flat late at night, a few doors down from the first pub, were to be the two book-ends of a hugely enjoyable drinking session. It lasted from 3.30pm to around 12.30am. The main action took place around St. James’ Park tube; “The Old Star”, “The Adam & Eve”, “The Buckingham Arms”, “The Albert” and “The Greencoat Boy.”

Jaro joined us for five hours in the last four pubs.

We had a blast. There had been a constant worry, of course, that both Jaro and Alex would succumb to COVID on this trip, but I can confirm that after the Saturday night with Parky and PD, Jaro became infected by a far more agreeable virus :

CHUCKLE19

There is no cure.

Sunday, and game day, soon arrived.

As I was the dedicated driver for the return journey, there was no match day boozing for me. I dropped Parky and PD off at West Brompton tube and they sauntered down to “The Eight Bells” for the second heavy session of the weekend. They were to be joined for a couple of hours by two United lads from Frome – I was only vaguely familiar with them – and who, much to PD’s amusement, had to be constantly assured that they would be “safe”.

Meanwhile, I parked up and then spent a couple of quiet hours in and around Stamford Bridge itself. I was outside the ground as early as 10.30am. It was a bitter morning in London town. I took a photo of the Peter Osgood statue with a clear and deep blue sky above. Jaro and Alex duly arrived and there were chats with Ron Harris and Colin Pates, the captains of my childhood and late youth.

They then needed to head back to their Earls Court hotel so we said our goodbyes, but not before a couple of photos in front of the old Shed Wall.

I backtracked and caught the tube down to Putney Bridge tube to catch up with the lads again.

I had been doing a lot of back-tracking in preparation of this game.

A current total of seventy-six games against United put them at the top of my list of opponents, with Liverpool a close second on seventy-five.

41 at Stamford Bridge.

25 at Old Trafford.

8 at Wembley.

1 at Villa Park.

1 in Moscow.

Won 25.

Drew 20.

Lost 31.

A quick top five of favourites?

Chelsea 5 Manchester United 0 – 1999/2000

Manchester United 1 Chelsea 2 – 2009/2010

Chelsea 4 Manchester United 0 – 2016/2017

Manchester United 1 Chelsea 2 – 1985/1986

Chelsea 1 Manchester United 0 – 1993/1994

There is a famous photo that does the rounds on social media of that last game, a shot taken above the North terrace at Stamford Bridge looking towards The Shed. It appeared recently and took me back to that game. The match took place in early September 1993, with Chelsea playing its first few tentative games under Glenn Hoddle. Manchester United were rampant and in their pomp. They had been crowned English Champions in the May, their first title in twenty-six long years. I was in The Shed early, watching with the younger brother of my oldest mate Pete, both United fans. I had taken Kev up to three Chelsea vs. United games, once with Pete too, in the early ‘nineties.

My one abiding memory that day was of United fans being led out of The Shed and into the North terrace before the game began. There had been no hint of trouble, as far as I was aware, but the word must have got out that there were packs of United in amongst the home fans and the police must have acted with thoughts for their safety. I am guessing that the queues had been so long to enter the North terrace that many United fans had simply diverted to The Shed instead. I have since been reliably informed that the game at Chelsea in 1993 was the very last “pay on the day” away game for Manchester United Football Club.

Back in the days of less than full attendances at Chelsea, it was always – always! – part and parcel of the match day experience to guess, pre-match, how many away fans would dare to attend, and then guestimates of numbers immediately after. The huge sprawling North Stand held up to 10,000 in those days, and it was always impressive when away clubs filled it.

From personal memory, the best away followings I have personally seen at Chelsea were :

Liverpool 1985/1986

Tottenham 1978/1979

Manchester United 1993/1994

West Ham 1984/1985

Manchester United 1984/1985

Another memory from days out at the old Stamford Bridge. Very often the away team coach would appear in that gap between the derelict part of The Shed and the towering East Stand. It’s appearance always drew ribald abuse from The Shed regulars.

To complete the picture, we won 1-0 on that day in September 1993, a Gavin Peacock goal – a nemesis for United that season – and it remains as one of my favourite games against United.

Down in the “Eight Bells” PD and Parky had been joined by Rich and John from Edinburgh, and – yes – a full on session was in progress. Danny and Nick from Minnesota called in too. The pub was rammed.

It was still oh-so cold as we made our way to Stamford Bridge. I wolfed down a cheeseburger with onions outside the stadium in a vain attempt to get some (lukewarm) food inside me. It almost worked.

I was inside by around 4pm. For once the United end – 3,000 not 10,000 this year – was not festooned with flags and banners.

A solitary “One Love” banner timidly peeked out.

The Chelsea team?

Mendy

Rudiger – Silva – Chalobah

Alonso – Loftus-Cheek – Jorginho – James

Hudson-Odoi – Werner – Ziyech

A big game for Reuben. Not a big game for Ronaldo, relegated to the bench.

We dominated early in the game, and we dominated all of the first-half. Timo Werner looked lively but continued his frustrating ability to freeze in front of goal. Hakim Ziyech, starting the game well, forced a save from De Gea. There was a fine shimmy from Callum Hudson-Odoi, running with that stooping style of his, his centre of gravity falling with each yard covered, and he slid a low shot across the goal that the United ‘keeper did ever so well to save. There was a header from Rudiger and another effort from Ziyech. A long cross from Reece to Alonso, but for once it was not met with a volley.

The atmosphere, I have to be honest, was not great.

In days of yore, a huddle of bodies on a packed terrace helped maintain not only noise, but assisted against the cold. On this day, I was just so aware of how cold a plastic seat could be.

The temperature was dropping, and the noise levels were dropping alongside.

On the half-hour mark, a strong dipping shot from Rudi forced a fingertip save onto the bar from De Gea.

As for United, there was just a lazy shot from Fernandez that drifted well wide and a couple of Rashford-led breaks that caused us minimum concern.

There were further efforts on the United goal; from Werner, from Callum, from James, from James again. If only Gavin Peacock was playing.

At the break, at Stamford Bridge and elsewhere, Chelsea fans were lamenting our failure to break the deadlock, and we hoped – and prayed – that such profligacy would not haunt us.

Oh dear. Just five minutes into the second-half, following a Chelsea corner, the ball was hoofed into our half. The lone figure of Jorginho was holding the fort. Sadly, a poor touch splayed the ball into the path of the otherwise quiet Jadon Sancho. His was an easy task. He raced up the pitch and knocked it past Mendy. The roar from the United support chilled me further.

To my absolute joy, the Chelsea support immediately bellowed a magnificent response to going behind.

“COME ON CHELSEA, COME ON CHELSEA, COME ON CHELSEA, COME ON CHELSEA.”

A half-volley for Werner, fail. A pattern was emerging. Sadly, Ziyech, so full of promise in the first-half, seemed to be nervous and unsure of himself.

Ronaldo replaced Sancho the scorer, but did little.

We regained our dominance.

We seemed to be enjoying corner after corner. After one, Wan-Bissaka chopped at Thiago Silva. To be truthful, I missed the challenge, but was overjoyed – if not a little surprised, Anthony Taylor was having his usual odd game “against” us – when a penalty was rewarded. Seventy minutes were on the clock. Jorginho stepped forward.

Albert in front of us, slid past and said “I’ll take one for the team, lads” and sprinted off to the gents. On many other occasions over the last twenty-four years, an Albert Toilet Break has resulted in a Chelsea goal.

Alan asked me : “Skip, or no skip?”

I gave it some thought.

“Skip.”

A skip it was, and the ball flew to De Gea’s right.

Chris : skip.

Albert : to the loo.

Jorginho : my darlin’.

GET IN YOU FUCKER.

“Al, when he does his skip, he usually goes to the ‘keeper’s left. But it’s almost like Pavlov’s Dog now. A ‘keeper sees the skip and goes left. He’s won the mind games.”

The noise was, then, at last, stratospheric.

Superb.

We kept firing in, but continued to miss-fire. An odd cross-shot from Werner, and another miss from the same man. On a good day, he could have nabbed a hat-trick. Those good days are few and far between.

Three substitutions:

Christian Pulisic for Alonso

Mason Mount for Hudson-Odoi

Romelu Lukaku for Werner

“The stage is set, Al.”

Despite a continuation of corners and crosses, the winning goal proved elusive.

At the other end, a Mendy error almost gave United an undeserved win. The United attacker’s lob was poor and our ‘keeper gathered. In the very last move of the game, a suddenly impressive Pulisic crossed for Rudiger but his first-time volley blazed way over.

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

A frustrating game, a game devoid of real quality, with a United team that had rarely – ever – been set up so defensively.

Next up, Watford on Wednesday.

See you there.

Gallery

Game 77

1993

Mister 795

Tales From The Loony Toon

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Chris Axon

Newcastle United vs. Chelsea : 30 October 2021.

At 1.37am on Saturday morning, I posted this on “Facebook” :

Get Daniels. Get Parkins.

And then a six hour drive to The Loony Toon where a team awaiting transformation lie in wait.

“You’re a big club but you’re in bad shape.”

I watched “Get Carter”, the 1971 original and not the US remake, a few months ago. I was shocked with how shocked I was. The film’s subject matter featured the criminal underworld of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and the brutality of a few scenes matched the brutal architecture that appeared in the ‘sixties in that particular city.

For the second time in around six weeks I was heading to a black and white city, a favourite along with Turin, and to a place where Michael Caine had starred in films. In the build-up to the bank raid in Turin, his famous line about “blowing the bloody doors off” is well-remembered. In “Get Carter” the line about a fellow gangster, altered slightly on this occasion to describe our opponents, is equally memorable.

Anyway, enough of this waffle.

We usually fly up from Bristol for games in the North-East. On this occasion, the prices of flights were much higher than usual, so after a little deliberation, I decided to take the bull by the horns and drive up. I wangled an early shift at work on the Friday, finished at 3pm, and was asleep by 6pm.

The alarm woke me at 12.30am. I fuelled-up en route to collect PD at 2am. We collected Parky at 2.20am. What God-forsaken times, eh? Needs must.

We were on our way to The Toon.

I had booked an apartment in the city’s West End, around a twenty-minute walk from St. James’ Park, and hoped that the rain that was expected to fall later in the day would not drag on until the evening. The aim was to get to Newcastle at around 9am, then join in the pre-match fun on the quayside, but then have a relaxing evening, not go too crazy, in preparation for the return journey on the Sunday.

Now then, there are many who take the time to read these match reports who appreciate the most minute details of these trips. For those living far away from these shores, and especially those who have not been able to see us play, I love the fact that many like being able to experience my match days and my match day routines. The word that I hear most is “vicarious”. These next few paragraphs are for those who live vicariously through my words ( he says rather pompously)…

For the others, feel free to skip ahead. I won’t be offended.

Driving to Newcastle from my part of the world is around a three-hundred and thirty-mile journey. With non-stop driving, it’s five-and-a-half hours. It’s a long one. I have driven to Newcastle for Chelsea games on two other occasions; once for our 1-3 loss in the spring of 1997, and again in early autumn for a dire 0-0 draw, a game that would mark Gianluca Vialli’s last game in charge.

Incidentally, the longest trip that I have undertaken without stopping over was Middlesbrough in 2008. That topped out at 580 miles and I vowed “never again.”

I soon found myself bypassing Bath and by 3am I was joining the M5 from the M4. There was a little rain through Gloucestershire but nothing too heavy. PD had managed five hours’ sleep, Parky four. I fully expected them both to “drop-off” at some stage on the long haul north. There were two diversions, near Gloucester on the M5, and near Tamworth on the M42, the result of roadworks. A few more minutes were added to our travel time. PD was in charge of the mobile tuck shop and as I wended my way through some quiet Warwickshire roads, I wolfed down a couple of treats that he had prepared for the journey. We hit the M1 at around 5am and I was happy with our progress. Outside the night was black, and the traffic – even on the M1 – was pretty sparse. Parky was asleep in the back.

I continued the long road north. It seemed that signs for Leeds appeared often, too often, like ghosts from the past. As I veered off the M1 near Sheffield, I thought I had seen the end of them, but Leeds still appeared for many miles.

Up and onto the A1, I soon stopped to refuel at Beverley Services. The traffic thinned out further as we saw signs for Scotch Corner and Teeside. At around 7.30am, just south of Durham, I decided that I needed a rest. My eyes were heavy and a “power nap” was in order. I dropped off for about thirty minutes. When I awoke at 8.15am, it was light. I soon realised that I had done the right thing. That thirty minutes would see me well for my final approach into Newcastle, but would also give me fresh energy for the rest of the day.

Anthony Gormley’s “The Angel Of The North” overlooks the main approach road through Gateshead and into the city centre. It looked dark and foreboding on this visit, its usual rusty colour now blackened in the morning murk.

I spotted, for the first time, road signs for Low Fell, and it brought a lump to my throat. Here, on the main London to Newcastle railway line, former Newcastle United and Chelsea legend Hughie Gallacher committed suicide in 1957 by throwing himself in front of a train. One day, on one visit to this area, I will pay my respects. He remains the one player from our distant history that I wish I had seen perform.

On the train home after the famous 1-1 draw in March 1984, on the same line, our train carriage was “bricked” by locals. I remembered a young lad getting bloodied from the shattered window. About a year or so ago, on a “Chelsea In The ‘Eighties” forum on “Facebook” I happened to mention it, and the actual chap who had been hit soon replied to my comment. How often do I mention how small our Chelsea World can be?

So, here I was; on the cusp of driving over the River Tyne in my own car for the first time since 2000. The A184 served me well. A slight curve and there she was; Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in all her glory. The buildings rising up from the quayside, the wonderful array of seven bridges traversing the river, and the glass and steel edifice of St. James’ Park perched at the top of the hill. Everything so clear, everything so immediate. It was a wonderful sight. It took me back to the first time I ever crossed the River Tyne for that game in 1984. Wild times then, not so wild now. But the city was still so dramatic. It was super to be back.

The route took us to within five hundred yards of the stadium, but we then veered west. At just before 9am, as per my planning, we had arrived. We left our bags in my car, ‘phoned for a cab – which never arrived, so a second call was needed – and at just before 10am we had ordered our breakfast at the already busy “Wetherspoons Quayside” pub.

We had made it.

A few familiar faces were already inside and we were to be joined by a few more.

A special mention for our pals Gillian and Kevin from Edinburgh. Kev had proposed to Gillian the previous evening – Newcastle is a favourite city of theirs too – and Gillian was sweetly, and proudly, flashing the silver engagement ring.

“Ah, congratulations you lovebirds.”

Unfortunately, they were not fortunate enough to get match tickets. I had heard a familiar story from others. The demand wasn’t able to be met. I guess a fair few had travelled to Tyneside without the hope of a ticket. This just shows how much fellow fans have missed matches since the game was taken from us in March 2020, but also illustrates the lure of a night in Newcastle, and on Halloween weekend to boot.

We wolfed down the breakfast but outside the rain became worse by the minute. The idea was to hit five or six quayside pubs. But the rain stalled our plans. We stayed put for an hour and a half. Two “San Miguels” and a lighter “Coors” went down well. More and more Chelsea arrived; Pauline, Mick, Paul, Rob, Dave, Alex, Chay, Dave, Rich, Donna and Rachel.

Then Andy, from our area, with his mate Russ, who we have met a few times. Russ is from Newcastle and a fan of his home town team. Like many, he was relieved to see the back of Mike Ashley. We didn’t talk too much about the Saudi takeover. It’s too much of a moral minefield in my opinion. I am just glad that my club isn’t now owned by a group from Saudi Arabia. Shudder.

This would be my twelfth visit to St. James’ Park with Chelsea. For many years, I just couldn’t afford these trips. Thankfully, my financial situation has improved over the past twenty years and I try to make it each season. As everyone knows, our recent record up there is rather wobbly. But this game never felt like a potential banana skin to me.

On that visit in 2000 to Newcastle, I travelled up with Mark, a former work colleague who went to university in the city in the late ‘eighties. He was, and is, a Blackburn Rovers fan, and just fancied revisiting his old stomping ground for the first time in a while. Memories of that weekend got me thinking.

I haven’t seen too many non-Chelsea games in my life. I have seen half a dozen at Stoke City, plus a handful at Fulham, Swindon Town, Derby County, Brentford, Portsmouth, York City, Port Vale, Bristol City, Bristol Rovers, Yeovil Town and Blackburn Rovers within the English league structure. A grand total of around twenty games, as opposed to over 1,300 Chelsea matches.

However, in 1992/93 I actually saw Newcastle United at three away venues during their Second Division promotion campaign. Around that time, I wasn’t in a particularly well-paid job and in the seasons 1990/91 to 1993/94 I only averaged around twelve Chelsea games per season.

I think a little explanation is required, don’t you?

My good friend Pete – a college friend living nearby in Bristol then and just outside Bristol now – and a lifelong Newcastle United fan coerced me into the away game at Brentford when I was visiting mates in London. He also asked me to attend the more local matches at Bristol City and Swindon Town.

I am sure it’s not too uncommon for fans of one club to watch other teams, though I definitely haven’t made a habit of it.

“Chelsea one week, Fulham the next” as the saying went in days of yore.

Pete is from Scunthorpe, and he memorably went to see us win the Second Division Championship on the final day of 1983/84 with our game at nearby Grimsby Town. He was also present, of course, at that game in Newcastle in 1984.

At the game against Brentford at Griffin Park in October 1992, Pete watched in the away end, but I watched the match with two other college mates in the home end. Memorably, we bumped into Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott hours before the game began outside the stadium. Newcastle won that 2-1. In January 1993, I was in the wet away end with Pete to see Newcastle beat Bristol City 2-1, with Andy Cole playing for City. In March, I watched with Pete in the packed away end at Swindon Town as Andy Cole made his Toon debut, but Swindon won 2-1.

I also saw Chelsea beat Newcastle United 2-1 in the League Cup at Stamford Bridge in the October of that season – 30,000 and a good 5,000 Geordies – so I actually saw them play four times that season.

I enjoyed the experience of watching them in 1992/93. It was something different. Under Keegan, they were a very entertaining outfit.

In fact, in around 1996/97, I’d hazard a guess that Chelsea and Newcastle vied for being most fans’ “second favourite team.”

Strange but true.

The rain abated slightly, so we moved on down the river. I had discovered a new pub – or at least one not previously visited by us – and on the way to the “Head Of Steam” we bumped into Kimmy and Andy. Three pints in there – “Angelo Poretti”, a relatively new kid on the block – and we were joined by Jack and Andy too.

I was feeling a little light-headed, but oddly after one pint of the tried and trusted “Peroni” in “The Slug And Lettuce” I was feeling fine again.

Outside “The Akenside Traders” we were so lucky to catch a cab up to the stadium at around 2.30pm.

Unbelievably, despite leaving home at 2am, I reached the seats in the upper tier a mere few seconds before 3pm.

“Just in time” logistics at your service.

My first view of the pitch way down below me allowed me to see the two teams standing silently in the centre-circle in memory of the fallen.

I soon located Alan and Gal. Parky and I took our seats (*we obviously stood) alongside them.

The game started and I had to play “catch up” to take everything in. A full house, but not much immediate noise from the home fans. I was expecting more. The team?

Mendy

Rudiger – Silva – Christensen

James – Kante – Jorginho – Chilwell

Ziyech – Havertz – Huson-Odoi

But then.

Those hours of driving through the night, the time spent down on The Quayside and then the rushed cab ride seemed to be pointless. The first-half was a damp squib. What a let-down. Newcastle, no surprises, sat back and let us attack and grimly hoped that their defence would hold out. This was their Plan A, but there was no hint of a Plan B. They did occasionally offer a rare attack, but for most of that first forty-five minutes their team were so deep that every punted or hoofed clearance did allow support to Wilson nor Saint Maximin, their undoubted two stars.

Chelsea, of course, dominated the game yet there was little to admire. I have mentioned before how dull modern football can be at times, especially when one team is so defence-orientated. With players’ fitness levels so good these days, space in the final third was at an absolute premium. However, what space there was, we didn’t really exploit.

Many Chelsea fans hate being so high up at Newcastle. I don’t mind it at all. It only happens once per season. This time, as with many others, I usually get a very central viewing position. It does, undoubtedly, offer a very unique perspective on the positioning and placement of the attacking and defending teams.

I also love that it allows a view of the outside world, squeezed between The Gallowgate and the horizon. In days gone by, this was often the case. The Thames at Fulham, the church at Goodison, the tower blocks at Upton Park, Earls Court at Stamford Bridge. The stadium as a part of the city.

It’s lovely that so many of the city’s landmarks can be seen from inside St. James’ Park.

Our first real chance of note came on around the half-hour mark, but Hakim Ziyech’s goal after a lovely Jorginho pass was called back for off-side. I saw the flag early so wasn’t guilty of premature jokulation.

The same player then skied a shot wildly over the bar.

Fackinell.

I pleaded with Hudson-Odoi to stretch the defence, to get past his marker. I found him particularly frustrating.

Our only other notable effort was again from Ziyech. It looked like Reece James was shaping to take a centrally-placed free-kick just outside the “D” but it ended up in The Gallowgate. Maybe Reece should have demanded the ball.

I sent this message to a few friends in the US at the break.

“No intensity. No passion. No invention. No nuffing.”

Into the second-half, and somewhat surprising for someone who certainly hasn’t really impressed too much at Chelsea thus far, it was Ziyech who again threatened Darlow in the Newcastle goal down below us. A couple of shots, with a save and the post saving the home team. Shots from Havertz and James stirred the crowd.

The manager had obviously said a few things at the break.

A new chant was aired at a game for the first time and, although I wasn’t too happy that the Frank Lampard chant had been re-jigged, it certainly gathered momentum in that second-half.

“We’ve got super Tommy Tuchel. He knows exactly what we need. Thiago at the back. Timo in attack. Chelsea’s gonna win the Champions League.”

Funny, when we sang it about Frank winning the Champions League, it did seem somewhat preposterous. But Tommy has already won the bastard.

Crazy, right?

On sixty-four minutes, a double-swap.

Barkley for Ziyech.

Loftus-Cheek for Kante.

Within a minute, at last a devilish wriggle down the left from Callum and a cross into the box. The ball eventually fell to James. A touch with his right foot, a smash with his left. The ball flew into the net from an angle. What a clean strike.

GET IN.

Would the single goal be enough? I suspected so. However, around ten minutes later, the ball ricocheted back off a Newcastle defender after a shot from Loftus-Cheek. It ended up, rather quickly, at the feet of James again. No time for thought, he smashed it in with his right foot this time. Two amazing goals. Euphoria in the top tier of The Leazes.

“We’ve got super Tommy Tuchel. He knows exactly what we need. Thiago at the back. Timo in attack. Chelsea’s gonna win the Champions League.”

Frank’s version had Tomori and Tammy. The new song kept the theme going.

The Teutonic technician Thomas Tuchel – plus Thiago and Timo – at the top in The Toon.

Phew, I need a drink.

Maybe a tea.

Not long after, a clear foul on Havertz gave Paul Tierny no option.

Penalty.

“Give it to Reece!”

No, Jorginho claimed the ball.

Alan : “A skip or no skip?”

Chris : “A skip.”

No skip, but a goal.

Newcastle United 0 Chelsea 3.

Love it.

Saul came on for Callum, but by then the vast majority of the home fans were heading, er, home.

The final whistle blew.

And Newcastle was blue.

Superb.

With Manchester City, incredibly, losing 2-0 at home to Crystal Palace and with Liverpool letting a 2-0 lead slip with a draw at home to Brighton, this was a magnificent day. We were, unbelievably, three points clear at the top.

The three of us slowly walked back to our digs and then reconvened at “The Bridge Hotel” at just after 7.30pm. A relaxing few drinks with Gillian and Kev was then followed by a curry. It topped off a perfect day in The Loony Toon, which was clearly living up to its reputation as the UK capital of alcoholic excess, debauchery and hedonism. I am not quite sure what the Saudis would make of it.

We set off for home as early as 9am on the Sunday. Despite some truly horrific driving conditions during the first two hours or so – so much spray, so much rain, but then when blinding sun arrived it was like driving through snow – I made it home at 4pm.

Seven hours up, seven hours down, three points in the bag.

See you, I hope, next season Newcastle.

My next game is at home to Burnley on Saturday.

See you there.