Rotterdam

It’s another long one, but at least there’s nothing about Oracle in here.

Tonight is the Champion’s League Final . I’ll leave the small matter of why only one of the teams were champions of their national league last year for another time but, as I watched the supporters milling around in Paris on this morning’s news, it took my mind back to 4th August 1976, when I was ten-and-a-half years old.

As hard-core football supporters might recognise, that date is a little too early in the year to be of great significance, but Liverpool played Feyenoord in Rotterdam in a pre-season friendly. My Dad, who was absolutely crazy about football, as a player, manager, coach, spectator and referee (!), decided that it would be a good match for us to attend. At the time we lived near RAF Laarbruch on the Dutch/German border.

In a stroke of pure genius, he realised that he could combine the trip with collecting our brand new metallic Peppermint Green Chrysler Avenger from Rotterdam docks. We were extremely excited about the new car � cheap cars being one of the perks of living in Germany. Tickets were purchased, travel to Rotterdam booked (I can’t remember how we got there though � post traumatic stress syndrome seems to have wiped my pre-match memories) and overnight accommodation was reserved. Except it wasn’t. I think we went there with the plan to ‘sort something out when we get there’ and preferably *very* cheap. We went camping a lot and would occasionally rent an apartment in a seaside town, but had never stayed in a hotel! I was looking forward to it.

Prior to the match, my Dad bought me two tiny pennants from a street vendor – a Bayern Munich one and a Barcelona one. I don’t have them any more, but I had them for years and will never forget them. No Liverpool scarves for me 😉 You see, my Dad was a Europhile and appreciated fine football – most of which didn’t come from Britain in those days. There was an element of bloody-mindedness about it and not following the crowd, but he was also in awe of the way the continentals practiced their skills, prepared their bodies and expanded their thoughts about the game. He’d had an offer to go semi-professional for a Dutch side years before and was keen on Dutch football until the end. These days it’s common for Johnny-come-latelys to rave about European football but, in those days, your average British football supporter couldn’t see past the end of their nose.

He was also keen on watching football from high up, so that he could see the play develop. I had never been to such a big stadium and he insisted on sitting in the top tier, even though the attendance was only 25,000 in a 60,000 capacity stadium. I felt like we were navigating the Artic tundra up there. I think I could probably see a supporter in the hazy distance, but it wasn’t packed, that’s for sure.

Liverpool lost 2-0 but I can’t really tell you anything about the match except the players were very, very small.

After the match, my Dad decided to treat me to a meeting with Kevin Keegan and an autograph (which was strange, because he generally feigned contempt for all English star players). We went to the front door of the Liverpool bus and asked if Kevin would like to come and say hello and sign an autograph for me. The answer came back ‘No’ and I could see Kev sitting in his seat, leaning against the window and looking utterly dejected and tired. You never heard a good word said about Kevin Keegan in our house after that. In fact, when he signed for Hamburg SV a season or two later, we had the pleasure of seeing every game he played against Shalke ’04 (our German team) and booing his bubble-permed bonce every time he went near the ball 😉

Off we headed to secure some accommodation. All I remember about this part was walking around some very unsavoury streets knocking on hotel doors (I have some doubts about what type of ‘Hotels’ they were) and the proprietors laughing in our faces or the look of shock on my Dad’s. By about 2am it was obvious that there was nowhere to stay within our budget, so we just wandered the streets quite aimlessly. At some point, my moaning must have got too much for my Dad (who I now understand would have been feeling really guilty) and he must have snapped at me. I started bawling my eyes out and walked away from him. We were in a weird urban train station at the time. Just as we separated, my hysteria was at it’s peak and he was trying to catch me, along came a couple of Dutch policeman 😉 Imagine the scene from their perspective, at that time in the morning. My Dad, accompanied by the two policeman, walked up to me with pleading eyes. ‘Douglas, tell them that you know who I am and that I’m your Dad.’ They took a minute or two to be convinced and kept a careful eye on us as we departed the scene. Suffice to say that he narrowly escaped child molestation charges and that we had an unspoken agreement not to argue again that night.

Eventually we found our way to the docks and lay on a grassy bank as the sun came up, waiting to take delivery of the car. We were first in the queue.

In those days, running in an engine for the first 500 miles was even more important so he had to drive us all the way home very slowly. I didn’t care. It might not have been a Famous Five-style picnic, but I was warm and ripping bits off a warm loaf of bread, stuffing my face (god, I make us sound really poor!). I drifted off to sleep while he took care of the boring driving thing, probably close to sleep himself.

When we got back to the house and my Mum asked ‘How was it?’ (no mobile phones in those days, either) I didn’t know what to say.

Come on Barcelona!

(Actually, I don’t care too much either way – may the best team win)