You Can't Ban an England Fan! Breaching The Ring of Steel in
Istanbul
Turkey v EnglandEuro 2004 Qualifier, Saturday October 11, Istanbul 
Somebody just told me we were banned from the game away in Turkey
as I land at Heathrow Airport having successfully watched the game
from inside the ground. So far the count of England fans inside
the "ring of steel" is 8 - still waiting news of any others.
Our trip started with a minor problem - arriving at London City
Airport at 7am Friday 9th October we were told that we were not
booked on today's flight. We were actually booked for the 9th June
- still at least the police don't know we're travelling. Thanks to the FA ban (Mr Barber) a number of England fans are not
turning up for their flights and they squeeze us on the flight to
Frankfurt, and with a bit of negotiation at Frankfurt we are on
our flight to Istanbul and arrive at 5pm. Only problem is we can't
get a flight home for another 8 days - never mind we'll worry about
that later! We get pulled by the English Old Bill at Passport Control in Istanbul,
but smartly dressed and with bogus flights to Ankara the next morning
on the pretence of business we get through into Istanbul. Arrived in hotel and found ourselves upgraded from our £100
a night room, to a five room suite - muppets! Invited the boys around
for a quick drink in our room before heading out to sample the delights
of Istanbul. A few hours later everything is closed so we head back
to the hotel, a £100 drinks bill and we hit the sack about
4am. Had a lie in and met our Turkish hosts for the day at 3pm (five
hours till kick off). Today our pre-match routine has changed, no
England shirts, they have been replaced with Fenerbache shirts and
in our effort to blend in with the Turks our pre-match drinking
session has been replaced by Turkish grub and a coffee. For the first time ever I will find myself entering a stadium without
consuming a single beer - hopefully it will be an exercise which
goes unrepeated. After a short walk to the ground we had to tackle the "ring
of steel". Our group consisted of 4 Turks (2 male, 2 female)
and 3 English (2 male, 1 female) including the 365EnglandFans spy
known as "Heineken Media" as he always reaches the parts
of a ground others can't reach. Two of us wore bright yellow Fenerbache shirts (not very subtle)
and Heineken wore a Turkey top! We kept out heads down throughout
as 2 of us have blue eyes, unlike any Turks, and got through the
first checkpoint. The second one looked to be a little harder as ticket checks, searches
and Turkish ID were being checked - and we could see that they were
religiously checking everyone.
This is where our pre-planning and Turkish hosts came into action.
We were introduced as special guests - a Manager of TNT and wife
from the USA and an overseas worker from Germany (Heineken) and
this worked for the last two checkpoints - We were in! ..... only
to find that the tickets would not open the electronic turnstiles
- we were in the wrong place and it looked for a while that we would
have to go back out and start again . . could we be that lucky again.
But it was not the case - we were only on the wrong level and moved
along to the next turnstile! Once again we found ourselves inside the ground and quickly took
our seats - still two hours to go before kick off - another first
- we normally only just make it in for the national anthem. Those
two hours seemed like an eternity and we attempted to remain inconspicuous
- a very difficult task - as you looked around the full stadium,
the vast majority of Turks wore the red of Turkey - and there was
us in the bright yellow of Fenerbache - the only two in the ground!
Three England players came out to look at the pitch and were greeted
with every swear word I know in English and signs dotted around
the ground "Welcome To Hell," "You're Going To Drown
In The Bosphorous" and "The Rapers". The noise of
the whistles were deafening, the crowd were intimidating but at
the same time looked very impressive when the whole end bounced
up and down chanted their song. When the national anthems were played we heard the first bar before
the Turks starting booing, after that we never heard another note.
Every Turk, including the police, sings their national anthem so
we had to mouth the words like you do in church when you don't know
them. We cheered and booed in all the right places as the police never
took their eyes off us. 42,000 Turkish fans all wearing red and
there was us two muppets wearing bright yellow Fenerbache shirts.
Left on final whistle and jumped straight into a cab, back to the
safety of the hotel and another £100 bar bill.
We managed to change our flight to Sunday and are writing this
on the flight home. Sky Sports said No English Fans got into the ground. They were wrong! There were at least 8 of us, including one behind
the goal wearing a Rangers shirt!
|
