Liverpool FC - Euro Red Diary 2

by Joel Rookwood

UEFA Cup Second Round - Steaua Bucharest

I have made no secret of my loathing of UEFA and the dreaded European draws of late, which seem to land us the likes of Rome and Barcelona every other month. It appears however that someone heard my plea to see my team play in some more obscure destinations. First Ljubljana and now Bucharest, the two cities that our UEFA Cup exploits have led us to in the current campaign, do not exactly top every football fans 'must visit' list. And although I'm partially grateful, it is noteworthy that 'obscure' does more often than not mean 'expensive'. But I'm part of the 'our team's there so we're there' school of football fan culture, and so when the second round draw pitted us against the former European champions, Steaua Bucharest, the question was not if I'd get there, but how.

And after an arduous and frustratingly fruitless search for possible methods of getting to the Romanian capital independently, we reluctantly had to resign ourselves to the fact that we would have to rely on official club packages to get us there. Worse still, with few takers in our group keen to make the journey, we opted for the dreaded day trip, usually frequented by the non-scally, non-grafting, foreign, 'don't drink that much because I want to visit these old buildings while I'm here' contingent. God, I felt so dirty.

Anyway I'm ashamed to admit that we did not arrive in Romania until the morning of the match. We were met at the airport by an army of animated photographers and reporters, who ran round the fans excitedly, posing hurried questions in an English I wouldn't even describe as being 'broken', hardly waiting for the random and bemused response to be captured on camera before seeking out their next victim. Typically it was the foreign part-time colour crew decked in red from head to toe who most grabbed the attention of the media. The more experienced campaigners (who show their unconditional support by going anywhere and everywhere Liverpool play, not by biannual trips to the match and seeing how many club logos they can wear in one match outfit), just remained in the background, looking on uncomfortably, remembering the good old days when just Scousers went away to watch Liverpool play. We were just eager for the coaches to pick us up and get us to town so we could continue the drinking and sample some Romanian ale.

Even for some of the veteran Liverpudlians Bucharest was something of an unknown quantity. And as we pulled into town, we were unsure as to what kind of reception to expect. But any fears were soon dispelled when we made a brief stop at the club shop en route to the ground. Local fans queued not to gain entrance to the shop but to swap merchandise with Liverpool fans and again it was the part timers who proved most popular with the locals. The die-hard component were happy to proceed straight to the shop, rob it blind and head onto the bars before beginning the serious business of getting bladdered. After all, it was approaching 11.30 and I was completely sober. Shocking.

After wasting ten precious minutes in the club shop, we knew things were looking up when we were served beer as the drink with our McDonalds meals without even having to ask. Yet, conscious that this ale may not have been completely authentic we soon headed off to a nearby bar. Inside the goodwill continued, with Liverpool's win at Fulham at the weekend being shown on the TV and ale served to us at a rate that worked out at around the 45p a pint mark. If anyone wanted to remain relatively sober, it didn't look promising. Fortunately no one was of such a persuasion. When the ale's that cheap it would have been ridiculous not to have got blitzed.

As we poured into the next establishment, numerous Liverpudlians were singing, dancing and enjoying the ale, which was even cheaper than in the previous bar. Many of the lads were also sporting the red and blue balaclavas that were mysteriously sold in the club shop. Suddenly everyone was feeling pretty generous, and it wasn't uncommon to hear lads going to the bar and asking for thirty bottles of Ursus. I doubt the same will happen in Gothenburg for the final when the price will literally be tenfold. With the clientele of this pub almost completely Scouse, and every face recognisable, we decided to settle there before leaving for the ground some four hours later. …so I'm told.

Now on most European trips in the early rounds of the competition, the stories that are passed down tend to relate more to the extracurricular activities than the game itself, the result of which is often a mere formality. But Bucharest was largely speaking an exception (particularly for us wools who were on the day trip), as we were to find out as we entered the Ghencea Steaua Arena. We poured off the coach knowing little about the ground other than the fact that according to Houllier it housed the worst pitch he'd seen in Europe. In fact Liverpool had not even trained on the pitch in the days leading up to the game. We soon realised that the manager was not far wrong, for not only did the ground have no roof, but no real accessible way of getting to it either. We had to clamber up a slippery grass verge in complete darkness to get to the top of the stand, from where we caught a glimpse of the 'pitch' for the first time. I remember complaining about the surface in Ljubljana in the last round, yet that would be considered hallowed turf compared to this sodden minefield. Less than an hour before kick off, it was covered in plastic bags in an attempt to keep the water off the pitch. But as the covers were removed, the idiotic ground staff succeeding only in making the water gather in specific parts of the pitch, to such an extent that the ball wouldn't move five yards in some areas, which was clearly visible by the players' attempts to pass the ball on the floor in the pre-match warm-up.

The word started to go round that the unthinkable though almost inevitable had happened and that the game had been called off, but our fears were eventually relieved, or so we thought, when the players came out to warm up. Yet there was another uncomfortable period however when the players disappeared again shortly before kick off time, to a round of boos from the Romanians. By the grace of God however, the players reappeared ten minutes after the scheduled kick off time. At last, confirmation that the game would go ahead.

At the bottom of our stand there was a moat between the seats and a fence separating the fans from the players. This barrier appeared an ideal location from which to hang flags. And although there were the mounds of mud to contend with in the moat, which proved a considerable obstacle, we managed to get to the fence and hang three flags up behind the goal. Rain fell mercilessly from the second we entered the stadium until long after the final whistle, soaking the flags completely, but with a mention and countless appearances on TV and in various periodicals and newspapers following the game, it was worth it. Indeed Liverpool FC's official match report began,

"'Those who remember the past are destined to live through it again', proclaimed the banner behind the goal where the traveling Liverpudlians were stood in Steaua Bucharest's Ghencea Stadium. Could the omens be pointing to another memorable cup triumph?"

In the build up to the game, some people made a lot of the fact that Bucharest have won both the European Cup the European Super Cup, none more than the club themselves if their official merchandise is to anything to go by, with two stars denoting European successes featuring on everything Steaua. But the now mediocre Nottingham Forest have won Europe's premier trophy more times so I didn't subscribe to the view that a European pedigree alone was enough to convince me that playing the Romanians was anything to get excited about. And when the match got underway, it appeared my apathetic approach was not without foundation, for our opponents were nothing to write home about.

Indeed as if to emphasise the point, the hearty nine hundred red souls were rewarded for braving the weather on twenty-three minutes, when the goal machine that is Djimi Traore grabbed his first for the club. Whilst not being a bad defender he's undoubtedly got the worst feet in Europe, and with Jim scoring, overcoming our hosts began to appear a less daunting prospect. With Owen rested and left at home, few predicted that the young French fullback would open the scoring for Liverpool but no one complained when his strike flew past Hamutovski and nestled in the Romanian net, after good work from first Murphy and then Diouf.

The players dealt with the treacherous conditions admirably and produced a professional display, and almost doubled their lead on numerous occasions, notably through Kewell and Riise. In the second half Liverpool continued to pour forward and were unlucky not to have scored a second with Murphy, Heskey and Le Tallec all guilty of missing chances. With Liverpool failing to put the game beyond the home side, it was almost inevitable that the Romanians would push for an equaliser, roared on as they were by a passionate and vociferous home support. And indeed the local masses were not to be disappointed. Hyypia was at fault for Raducanu's goal, as he slipped and allowed the Romanian with a scoring chance that he took with aplomb, despite the attempts of the advancing Dudek. Either side could have taken a decisive lead in the closing stages but Gerrard for Liverpool and Mutica for the home side were ultimately to be denied, leaving the game all square.

With the match largely speaking an absolute farce, we spent much of the game talking to the local constabulary, who probably doubled up as the riot police with 'the English' being in town, trying to swap any Liverpool merchandise for some police armour. I was keen to try and prise a retractable baton from their grasp, but the stakes in the end proved a little too high for my liking. Anyway the Merseyside police may not have been impressed with the contents of my bag on re-entry into England had such items found their way into my luggage, so I can't say I'm too disappointed.

As well as the usual array of Scousers and woollybacks, there were also a few random Bulgarians in our end of the ground, who were informed in no uncertain terms that the England tops they were sporting were not appreciated. And although angry exchanges were subsequently made, there was no tangible violence between our group and theirs, and I'm sure they will have taken their story of how the lads of "The Peoples Republic of Liverpool", as one of my banners declares us to be from, assume an identity that is quintessentially Scouse and a distant relative from Englishness and everything that such an identity embodies. The victory therefore was ours.

The remainder of the trip passed without many exciting occurrences committed to my admittedly strained memory. I can seem to remember singing 'we're in Romania we've got pneumonia' to the tune of 'Santa Lucia'. Save for this rather amusing moment however, it was a relatively quiet conclusion, with most Liverpudlians in truth just keen to head home and defrost.

The next morning I awoke still sporting the filthy tracksuit I had worn the previous day, with much of the mud now transferred to my bed. My bag was beside me as well, which was stuffed full with soaking flags, and also somewhat mysteriously a sign that read 'Toaleta' which presumably means 'toilet' in Romanian. How or why it got there is a mystery to me, but regardless of such irrelevant issues it currently resides proudly on the door of my bathroom. As for the saturated flags, they were hung dripping wet from various windows of my flat for the next twenty-four hours in preparation for round three (oh, and forgive my arrogant dismissal of the Romanians chances for the second leg). My flatmate, who is of the blue persuasion, saw the flags as he was returning home from work that evening, and asked if I was waging war on Evertonians… like they could ever muster an army worthy of an attack. With rain never far from Liverpool, the flags are still a little damp, but I've got three months to dry them out, when no doubt it will happen all over again.

As is the tradition, the day after the game I also watched a tape of the game, to see among other things, the kind of exposure my flags got. Jonathon Pearce, the TV commentator on Channel Five introduced the game by informing the viewers that, "900 Liverpool fans apparently had to climb up very slippery grass bank through woods in darkness and no lights, inviting trouble and accidents." Yet this was nothing to us. Liverpool fans have undoubtedly been through a wider range of emotions than supporters of any other club in the world. We've seen it all; glory, fame, invincibility, tragedy, heartbreak, humiliation. Now we can add pneumonia to the list of experiences that are all just part of being a Liverpudlian. And day trip or no bloody day trip, I'm just proud I was there.

The return leg at Anfield was for some reason again not staged for a further three weeks, which made the tie feel less of a two-legged affair. UEFA's re-jigging of the UEFA Cup calendar, probably just serving as yet another show of power, means that fans of those teams who get as far as the semi-final in the competition this year will now be faced with having to fund eight European games in eleven weeks, with the ties squashed together next year. My money is on Liverpool getting Moscow, Sarajevo and some random Polish outfit if we get that far just to make life better still. Mr Blatter, we salute you.

'There's nothing quite like a European night at Anfield.' That's a phrase that has been in general usage for so long in these parts is practically a cliche. And while some of the most famous contests this continent has seen over the past forty years have taken place at 'Fortress Anfield', with the likes of Inter Milan, Barcelona and Roma all succumbing to famous and emphatic defeats at the legendary arena, with our current status in continental terms falling outside the elite, we must earn the right to mix it once again with Europe's big guns by first overcoming some lesser players. For in 2002 we were six minutes away from a European Cup semi-final against a side we had beaten five times in succession, and on our first appearance in the competition for seventeen years. Yet the side developed the season before, when workmanlike victories were grounded out in Europe's secondary competition against the likes of Slovan Liberec and Rapid Bucharest. And so with Houllier's team once again undergoing a reshaping process, last night saw the next stage of our redevelopment with the home tie against Rapid's neighbours Steaua Bucharest.

In truth this was far from a convincing performance. With Traore and particularly Diou in the side though, looking convincing isn't always easy. But we overcame the Romanian outfit without really getting out of third gear, which is pleasing enough for this highly subjective observer. Indeed a solitary goal, courtesy of Harry Kewell was enough to send the three-time winners through and ensure European football will still be a fixture on Merseyside come February.

Surprisingly it was the visitors who started the better, obviously enjoying the opportunity to be playing football on grass rather than the arbitrary water polo they usually participate in. For it took only two minutes for Claudiu Raducanu to go clean through on goal. Fortunately for Liverpool however, the onrushing Kirkland in the Liverpool goal did enough to thwart the striker, with the Romanian shooting over the bar to the collective relief of the Kop.

The home side did not need a further wake up call however and Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Kewell and El-Hadji Diouf all went close to opening the scoring, with the visitors some how riding their luck for the remainder of the half. But with Dietmar Hamann restored to the starting line up after regaining his fitness from a long lay-off, Liverpool's midfield looked far more compact, and destined to open the scoring. For at last, a quartet or Diouf, Gerrard, Hamman and Kewel were granted the opportunity to play together. If we can keep them fit, our season could finally now get started.

And sure enough, moments after the restart Liverpool grabbed the decisive goal. Steven Gerrard skipped past Pompiliu Stoica, before crossing the ball to Kewell who finished with aplomb, netting his seventh of the season. After the goal the home side were more assertive, almost adding to their lead through Gerrard and Owen. Despite the lack of goals however, Liverpool now look solid, and with the exception of a brief scare moments from the end, when Steaua substitute Laurentiu Nicolae Dinita shot just wide, Houllier's men always looked like progressing.

Liverpool are undergoing change, and of that there is no question. And this transformation is not without its teething problems. But anyone can see that Houllier is going in the right direction. We were the most defensive yet well-organised side in Europe for eighteen months, a period that saw an unprecedented trophy haul. But playing that way was never going to see us win the league. Houllier's humble admittance of that, and his willingness to adapt his side to employ a style of play that one must admit, as the great man himself no doubt would, is somewhat alien to him should see the man adopt even greater status than he currently holds. Yet unfortunately some are not quite so patient. Indeed the individual who held up the shoddily made banner in the Anfield Road stand during the first half proclaiming, "Not good enough for LFC. Time to go Mr Houllier", is one such example. If I'd have been sat anywhere near him I'd have incurred a life ban for what I would have done to him. I obviously wasn't alone in this respect, for the ground staff who evicted the individual were not exactly gentle in their efforts to rid Anfield of the culprit.

The UEFA Cup may find its way through the Shankly gates in May, and it may not. But when the hard work resumes once again in February, we'll be there come rain or shine in whatever city we're called to land in to ensure Houllier has the backing of the REAL fans. Allez Allez Gerard Houllier.

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