A Hard Rain (18/5/17)

 And this is the last chapter of the book 'They Say Our Days Are Numbered'

Liverpool 1 Sevilla 3

Europa League Final

18th May 2016

A Hard Rain

So, this is how it ends; not with a bang but with a whimper.

I’ve just looked up the origin of that quote, one of the many things that I’ve been doing today to avoid writing this part; it’s T. S.  Eliot apparently, comes from the poem ‘The Hollow Men’ a piece which concerns itself, in part, with the difficulty of hope. Seems somewhat accidentally apt, that. The difficulty of hope.

The rain, which seemed mildly amusing as we marched toward St Jakob Park with flares in our hands and songs on our lips, an invading army intent on nothing but glory and pleasure, all ‘sorry love, you can have your city back tomorrow’ and laughter, as me, Keith, Fleety and Mike abused Mongoose for his desire to shelter and keep dry, was bitter now; bitter and heavy and unrelenting.  I had entered the day, the country, the ground, filled with hope and expectation and certainty and belief; I left feeling nothing but old and cold and wet and tired, very, very tired and unable to see anything positive, any reason to keep moving forward other than to get out of the bloody rain.

And it had all started so well.

I’d thought it would just me. Well, just me and a few thousand others, obviously. Apart from those few thousand others, the season that had started with me picking up my first season ticket in my own name was ending with me going to my first ever European away game. At the age of fifty-two I was going to my first ever European away. Might as well be a final, mightn’t it? Do things the right way. Alone but right.

I knew I’d meet Fleety there, knew Fleety was sorted. Long coach trip but sorted. Then our Keith rang me. Thursday night, I think it was. Late, I’d been out, no idea where. “Could you do us a favour?” “Yeah, what?” “Could I get a lift off you from Milan to Basel?”

So, Keith’s in. Within a day, Mongoose has a ticket and there are three of us heading for Switzerland. There’s a message from Mike, he of the swapped Dortmund scarf that brought the luck and the drama; he’s coming. So’s the scarf. There are four of us, we’ll need to upgrade the car. Now this, this is right, this is how it should be.

“But you won’t need a full tank,” says the girl in the car rental place near Milan Malpensa airport once me and Mike (met up in Gatwick after I’d raced across town having corrected my original, almost disastrous ‘Victoria Line in wrong direction’ mistake) have negotiated the ‘having to locate the shuttle bus when their English is only marginally more existent than our Italian’ issue. “Yeah, love, that’s what you reckon, we’re driving to Switzerland in the morning.” Didn’t say it, obviously. Not out loud, not to her.

Mongoose is on the later flight from Gatwick. He’s Whatsapping us on his progress from the city centre to the hotel that’s just found out that I’m no longer on my own and, upon being asked if they could move us to a twin room or maybe a double, offers us a room with a double bed. “But it’s okay, the bed is big enough for a couple.”

Yeah, mate, we’re really not a couple. 

We don’t bother telling Mongoose that the second he arrives we’re going to drag him back into town because it’s funnier that way.  We quite fancy seeing Milan. We’ve never been there, he has, he’s our guide. 

We see the Duomo, all intricate and carved and beautiful and we see a bar which proudly displays the name Martini and menus which contain myriad Martini based drinks. So we’re drinking Martinis. Well, me and Mike are drinking Martinis, Mongoose is having none of that behaviour. And we’re talking to Danny, a cheerful, bearded fellow scouser who’s been working in Canada and has now ended up here as a stopping off point on his way to the same destination as us. 

And that’s where we meet Keith. Martinis in hand, overlooking the Duomo Square, pointing at those below, going “there’s our kid” and marvelling at how easy it is to meet up in nice places in theses ‘far foreign lands’. Sitting, drinking, talking about the possibilities ahead. Which are endless.

We meant to eat. I’m sure we meant to eat.

That was supposed to be the first line of this chapter; ‘We meant to eat.’

‘But you won’t need a full tank.’ That was supposed to be the first line as well. You write this in your head as it’s happening, as you’re taking everything in. You change it as you go along. Events take over. 

The radio is playing as we leave Italy. The Italian version of Capital that we had discovered the previous evening with its constant, obvious, fast-paced Italian and its terrible euro-pop is leading its breakfast show with Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’. On the 36th anniversary of Ian Curtis’s death, an Italian breakfast show is playing the opening track of Joy Division’s first album. I’ll guarantee that Capital in Liverpool isn’t doing this. They follow up with The Who. It’s a marvellous soundtrack to the start of an awfully big adventure.

Want a spectacular backdrop for your drive to the match? I fully recommend Milan to Basel. Snow covered mountains, lush green forests, perfectly blue lakes, sun kissed scenery, motorways that seem to exist on stilts with vertigo inducing drops to either side. Eighteen-kilometre long tunnels through mountain sides, slowly trickling streams wending their way down the hills, traditional swiss housing that seems to be made from a mixture of chocolate, gingerbread and Lego. Magical, enchanting, wondrous; until Thursday morning when you’re doing the whole thing in reverse with a hangover that’s equal parts shop bought Swiss lager and heartbreak.

“Look at it,” I said to Fleety - two rows and six seats apart, we’d managed to persuade the lad sitting next to him that moving forward and swapping with me was a good idea — “How are they supposed to cope with all this?”

The ‘all this’ was all us. Thirty-thousand of us, must have been thirty-thousand of us. Thirty-thousand of us in the ground and god knows how many more outside. We were that marching army, that singing army. We were the people who popped into a pub on the way down to the ground to use the toilet (the bushes? I’m not using the bushes when there’s a bog over there) and found ourselves in a chorus of ‘The ball, the ball, they never touched the ball, we played the shite on a Wednesday night and they never touched the ball, the ball, the ball…….’ that went round and round and had an older bloke, younger than me but still older, asking, “Why are you singing about them?” “Well, we’re only singing it in a pub bogs, we’re not going to sing it at the ground are we?”

And we weren’t; because, at the ground we were singing Poor Scouser Tommy and The Fields of Anfield Road and Three Little Birds and the next day I was looking at a photo of Bob Marley and going ‘I don’t know if he’s a lying get or not’ and for one glorious two minute spell at half time while we were still happy, still having a party, we sang, we ALL sang There She Goes and it was bloody special and anything was possible and it would only take seventeen seconds to prove us wrong and forty-five minutes to show just how wrong.

“All this? How can they cope with all this?” And the ‘they’ was Sevilla and the answer was, ‘pretty bloody well in all honesty.’

There are ten minutes at the start where it’s all a bit scrappy and then we calm down and we get into it. And we look like we can score. There’s a Sturridge header that’s cleared just before the line and there’s a Sturridge shot that’s saved and it’s clear that this match means something to Dan, he’s up for this. And when he scores his goal it’s right and appropriate and deserved. Deserved by him, by the team, by us. It’s world class. Honest to god world class; outside of the foot, curling all the way and we’re going wild. We’re everything that Sevilla aren’t and I genuinely think that we’ll win by three or four or five because I’m stupid and optimistic and naive and hopeful and drunk. And Liverpool are honestly that convincing. You know this, you watched this, it’s part of the disappointment. How good we were to how good we weren’t; the difficulty of hope.

There’s the square with the TV that’s a lot bigger than the one we’d all seen on twitter the day before and we’re standing drinking our shop bought lager and talking and laughing and having the best time you could ever have and it hasn’t started to rain yet but it will. And there’s the neutral zone and we think that’ll be worth a look, see how the neutral fans are partying. But there aren’t any neutrals. There’s a five-a-side pitch but it’s for the kids and there’s no chance of us getting a game no matter how much we want to. And it’s me suggesting it; us against a few Swiss lads or Spanish lads. Because I’m drunk and I’ve forgotten I’m fifty-two and shit at football. Mike isn’t, Mike’s taking on the bloke who’s running the skills competition and he’s not happy because the rules are getting changed so the bloke wins and we’re back to our zone because neutrality’s dull. God knows why the Swiss think so highly of it.

And I know that Basel’s the wrong place to have the game and I know the stadium’s too small but right now? Right now? Right now I’m kind of thinking, “I’ll give UEFA this, they’ve made an absolute pils of the whole thing here but it’s a cracking day out, isn’t it?” And it is.

And it’s winding down and we’re moving and we’re going the ground and we’re trying to figure out how many of us there are and the figure’s getting higher by the second. And the rain’s coming. But how can they cope with all this? Look at us, look how magnificent we are. Nobody does this like we do this. We’re beautiful and powerful and destiny’s coming.

Moreno heads it clear but ‘clear’ is the space between Coutinho and the Sevilla lad and the Sevilla lad’s racing at Moreno and he’s probably shouting ‘megs’ as he goes through him and Lovren and Kolo are nowhere near Gameiro and it’s a tap in. Seventeen seconds. All that work, wasted. In seventeen seconds. And you can see it in the lads’ body language. And our heads go. On the pitch, in the stands, our heads go.

I’m saying, ‘it’s okay, it was one-all in Rome’ but I’m not sure if it was or not. I believe it though. I believe we can come back. Fleety’s not sure, Fleety’s convinced the team’s mentality is all wrong, is too soft, too weak. Thinks they thought they had it wrapped up at half time, same as we did, got a bit cocky, same as we probably did but come on, we were having so much fun and I think he’s probably got a point here

Then it’s two. Lovren’s the one who’s megged this time but we’re still all blaming Moreno and I’m sure we had a reason, sure he was involved. Those who were watching the replays, watching the coverage, they’re convinced, they must have had reason. And I’ve watched the goals back and I’m not sure but there’s a line here and it’s a line that Alberto can’t possibly come back from.

And then it’s three. And we know it’s offside. We KNOW it. We see the flag go up and we’re screaming and we know. But we’re wrong because Coke wasn’t offside when his lad played the ball; the fact it bounced off three of ours on its random way to him means he was very much onside.

And we can’t come back. I’m invoking Istanbul and Dortmund and I’m trying to believe it can happen. It can’t. Sevilla are pulling us apart. We have no shape, no apparent ability to pull ourselves back into this game; our midfield has disappeared, our defence is struggling, our attack is at the point where ‘living off scraps’ is an ambition rather than a complaint. And we’re quiet. We’re shellshocked. The endless, joyful singing has gone. There are pockets, attempts, nothing that quite takes off. Origi and Allen and Benteke are on the pitch but it makes no difference, it’s too late and there’s the possibility that Jurgen got this call very wrong; there’s the argument that he should have bolstered the middle of the park earlier, possibly at the point that Sevilla started to make it their own. There’s the argument that we’ve got all the creativity and movement but we needed grit. The grit isn’t there; there’s no coming back from this. Not tonight.

Can is struggling, Milner’s trying but he’s in all the wrong places, Firmino’s disappeared and then subbed, Lallana’s pressing’s ineffective and then leaves the field with him. Coutinho manages to remain, to continue the anonymity that he had, unusually, brought to the first half. It has to be hope, it has to be the hope that Phil can pull something magical out of his locker to change this. If it’s not that, there’s no reason for him to be there now, not like this.

It’s horrible. The whole thing, all of it. Hideous. Embarrassing. Pathetic. It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen to a team. It’s a total capitulation; a humiliation. We’ve been given a lesson in football and courage and resolve. We’ve been made to look like a very, very young team (which we are) totally out of our depth. Which we are.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. But it has. All that’s left is the walk back in the cold, bitter rain and the wait for the others. But Mongoose has jumped the first train out and is on the station in Olten, where we have a lovely loft to sleep three which is unofficially sleeping four and has a pool table and table football, neither of which will ever be used by us, and Keith and Mike are in a McDonalds somewhere and my phone’s dead so I’m standing there, wet and cold and old and heartbroken and all I want is a cup of tea and my own bed but they’re far away.

The drive back to Milan exists in torrential rain and hangovers and there are only so many recriminations and investigations you can manage before you’re on the plane and in separate seats and drinking wine and then on English soil and in a pub near Euston with nothing to do but eat your first actual meal since Monday night and start drinking again. 

That’s a miserable way to end a story though, isn’t it? With despair and cold and rain and your expectations dashed; the difficulty of hope and all that.

How about if we sign off with this? We went to Switzerland. At the end of a rollercoaster season which saw some incredible nights and incredible victories and incredible comebacks, at the end of a season that allowed us to dream, we went to Switzerland for a European final. No other English team did that, I’ve checked. At the end of this season of incredible nights we ended up coming just short of that one last incredible moment. 

We still went though. We went and we had an adventure; me on my first European final, my brother and my mates adding another to their collection. We went and we had good company and we had Martinis in Milan and beers in Basel and we had one hell of a time. That’s what’s important isn’t it? Good company, good times, the memories that live on. For the doubters who took pleasure in the loss, the admittedly horrible loss, there is only this:

We’ve seen things they’ll never see.

It just wasn’t supposed to end this way.