Foreigers play abroad, too

The Champions League is back on the box, spread across umpteen channels and timeslots, but it wasn't always so.  For many years, my only opportunity to watch European clubs in action were in competitive matches against English opposition.

In the Seventies and Eighties, Football League clubs were regulars in the European Cup, UEFA Cup and Cup-Winners-Cup finals which had a fair chance to be snapped up by the BBC or ITV come May or June. Thus my younger self occasionally caught the likes of Bayern Munich, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Anderlecht, Valencia, FC Brugge, Roma or Benfica, featuring stars like Falcao, Beckenbauer, Camacho and Kempes. I probably saw – in black and white – the great Ajax team play Inter Milan in 1972 when Cruyff and co were in a purple patch.

It seems strange to think that Spain’s La Liga or the European Cup (now Champions League) wasn’t always dominated by Real Madrid and Barcelona, nor that Paris St Germain didn’t always win Ligue 1 or Juventus and Bayern Munich had, respectively, Serie A and the Bundesliga in their generously-proportioned back pockets. Real didn’t even hold that humungous hunk of silver at all between 1966 and 1998, and Barca had to wait until 1992 for their very first European Cup triumph.

In the Eighties and Nineties, Italy was the central focus of European club football. Serie A was the richest league on the continent, the prime destination for many of the most celebrated world players, including Brits such as Trevor Francis and Graeme Souness (Sampdoria), Ray Wilkins (Milan), David Platt (various), Ian Rush (Juventus) and, for three injury- and controversy-plagued seasons, Paul Gascoigne (Lazio).

It was when Gazza forsook Spurs for the cultural delights of Rome that Serie A attracted a bigger buzz amongst English football supporters and media alike. Channel 4, never a channel to mix with mainstream sports, took a gamble on broadcasting live matches on Sunday afternoons so we could see what all the fuss was about. I don’t think Dad and I cottoned on at first. However, with the new-fangled Premiership surrendering its soul to Rupert Murdoch’s fledgling Sky, to which we were seriously antipathetic, we found a new home for football after Mum’s roast dinner.

Football Italia altered my impressions of the Italian game in all sorts of ways. I’d previously had it drummed into me that it was dour and defensive, all catenaccio, designed to stifle attacking flair and generate a glut of goalless draws. I soon realised it wasn’t. Italian ‘calcio’ was about more than merely the back-line brilliance of Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta, Pietro Vierchowod and Giuseppe Bergomi; the Baggios, Francesco Totti, Attilo Lombardo, Alessandro del Piero and imports including Zinedine Zidane (Juve), Gabriel Batistuta (Fiorentina), Zvonomir Boban (Milan) and Marcelo Salas (Lazio) were amongst the forwards on display.

Another stereotype ripped up and chucked on the fire was that it’s always hot and sunny in Italy. It was partly disappointing yet also somewhat heartening to sit in our lounge and watch, say, Parma versus Sampdoria in cold, driving February rain every bit as miserable as our own. Under James Richardson’s presentation, the programme was far more cheery, and Football Italia also ventured outside the stadia for a cultural and culinary break, albeit not without some intelligent humour.

In the end, the fact that Serie A football was not much different from our own Premier League, with its own increasing number of top-notch foreign buys, killed our interest and, with other demands on my time, I stopped watching altogether. There remain, however, memories of AC Milan’s mastery under Fabio Capello in the early 1990s, the highlight being their European Cup success – shown on BBC – in 1994. Several years later I enjoyed reading Tim Parks’ book A Season with Verona which details the experience of following the frailties and fortunes of the Hellas Verona club, reviving images of those games, crowds and banners I’d once watched on Football Italia.

In the early twenty-first century, ITV’s Champions League coverage occasionally deviated from the usual dull preoccupation with Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea to showcase some extraordinary matches. Those Tuesday and Wednesday evening live broadcasts were by no means regular dates for me. Nevertheless, I did tune in to watch Monaco’s breathtaking destruction of a galactico-laden Real Madrid (Ronaldo, Beckham, Zidane, Figo et al) in a 2004 quarter-final to win on away goals. It was also a rare privilege to watch the French side meet the similarly unheralded Porto of Jose Mourinho in the final. I didn’t know who to support so didn’t mind when the Portuguese ran out 3-0 winners.

A year later I was on holiday in Sicily when Liverpool achieved their astonishing comeback against a Milan side which had ripped Gerrard and co so convincingly to shreds in the first half. Perversely unpatriotic as I am, I’d wanted the English team to lose. Our Italian courier told me afterwards that many of her countrymen and women were actually quite pleased Liverpool won on penalties because they hated the corrupt billionaire, far-right politician and Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi. Fair point!

In the last decade, the emphasis has shifted towards Spain as an alternative to the bloated beast that is the EPL. In particular, towards the cult of El Clasico and of Messi v Ronaldo. Even though I now live in a digital-subscribing household, the Sky and BT Sport channels featuring plentiful coverage of Spanish (or indeed French, Dutch and German) club football has been insufficient to lure me (or Angie) away from our domestic appetites of PL, soaps and thrillers.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the genius of Lionel Messi. Quite by chance, one evening in March 2012 my channel-hopping led me to ITV as a backdrop to a tedious session of ironing. They were showing Barcelona’s Champions League fixture against Beyer Leverkusen and pretty soon my domestic god credentials were seriously bruised by the necessity to stop and watch what was unfolding. The champions were rampant. It wasn’t that the German side were atrocious; but whenever Pep Guardiola’s side attacked, they seemed to score. Prompted by Xavi, Iniesta and Fabregas, Messi scored five, finishing with such contemptuous ease I had to put the shirts aside and applaud. He couldn’t see me but I didn’t care. That’s how good he was. I had seen Messi with Argentina in the World Cup but here he was in his natural habitat, at the Nou Camp, a bird of paradise in red and blue plumage. I realised what I had been missing the past several years.

Since then, the Champions League has mainly been a battle between Real and Barca, with Atletico Madrid, Bayern, Juve and even Liverpool sneaking onto the top table when the opportunity presented itself. The 2014 final featured a Madrid derby in which Atletico shared equal billing. I fervently hoped they’d thwart Real’s push for La Decima, their much-vaunted tenth title, and it seemed my wish had been granted until Sergio Ramos powered an unstoppable injury-time header. Bale popped up on the far post to put Real ahead and who else but Ronaldo applied the coup de grace.

However impressive Pep’s latest charges, Manchester City, may appear, there’s always a certain appeal in snooping around the obscure fringe channels to spot contests in Barcelona, Breda, Bologna or Beijing, players adorned in exotic purple, green and white stripes or red and white quarters. Football is universal. Wherever the location, the grass is always green, the lines are white, fans sing, chant and wave banners and the emotions of joy, disappointment, indignation and fury are the same everywhere, regardless of local language or dialect. I’ve watched in hotel rooms around Europe, loving the ubiquitous manic Latin “Gooooooooaaaaaallllllllllll” commentary, even Thailand, and seen how TV football unites multinational audiences in many a continental bar. There’s more to the sport than the Premier League. Lots more.

Being a Fan - Billericay and Exeter City

While QPR have resolutely remained my number one club, others have infiltrated my affections from the touchline without quite taking over the midfield. In the mid-1970s, my local side Billericay Town languished in the Essex Senior League: too good for the division but unable to escape because of inadequate facilities. Only when we won a set of floodlights could we advance to what was then the Athenian League.

Meanwhile, Town were also competing strongly in the national FA Vase tournament for the lowest tiers of the English football pyramid. In ’76 they reached the final, to be played at Wembley. Suddenly everyone was a Billericay supporter. The boys – and even some girls - at school were buzzing with excitement at the prospect of winning a trophy at the greatest stadium of all.

Dad and I bought tickets and joined one of the many buses hired for the trip around the North Circular. The ground was nowhere near full, with most sections unused. However, unlike my Milk Cup Final experience a decade later, we came away having witnessed the Billericay captain Arthur Coughlin receiving the gleaming trophy from FIFA’s then boss Sir Stanley Rous after a 1-0 victory against Stamford. There was also the less edifying sight of my first episode of football hooliganism in the coach park, but my first Wembley visit had been one to remember for positive reasons. A week afterwards, I joined the throng as the town turned out in their thousands for an open-top bus parade and Billericay bathed in the glowing rays of glory (above). 

They repeated the feat the following year (programme left), although Town required a replay at Forest’s County Ground (pupils were allowed the afternoon off school to travel if they had a ticket) after a 1-1 scoreline at Wembley. We missed out in ’78 but Dad and I completed the hat-trick a year hence, enjoying a comprehensive 4-1 drubbing of Almondsbury Greenway, including a rare Wembley hat-trick of his own for Town’s Doug Young.

I can’t pretend to have been stimulated by all this success into regular attendance at the little New Lodge. University intervened, then the world of work, and the momentum had been lost. I still stay alert for Billericay’s results and give a cheer on the occasions (four so far) they reached the heady heights of the FA Cup first round proper. Under the ownership of showy businessman Glenn Tamplin, Town upgraded the ground, won promotion to the Bananarama – sorry – Vanarama National League South. Could we (we!?) do a Salford or AFC Wimbledon and scale the non-League ladder in double-quick time? Tamplin's sudden decision to sell suggests not.

Between 1979 and 1982, while an undergraduate, I took the opportunity to follow

local Division Three outfit Exeter City. My charmed sense of timing was again to the fore as my university years coincided with a great FA Cup run and a home tie against the European champions.

Early in 1981, the Grecians earned home replays in both the fourth and fifth rounds, facing higher-ranked opposition. The best performance I witnessed in my three seasons down in Devon came in Exeter’s match against First Division Leicester City. Our prolific striker Tony Kellow scored a hat-trick in that game, which also featured a fellow Maths undergraduate (a year ahead of me) Ian Main in goal. Three weeks later, on another cold Wednesday evening, I again took my place on the cramped terraces within the venerable 1930s ‘Cow Shed’ stand, this time for the visit of Newcastle. More than 18,000 fans were shoehorned into the decrepit ground and the atmosphere was superb. The night air rang out with the Devon version of the Pompey chimes: “I-oh, City. City, I-Oh”. And what a result, too: 4-0 to City! There was a massed pitch invasion after the whistle and nobody batted an eyelid. I then hurried back through the residential streets to the Birks Halls TV room to enjoy the highlights on BBC1’s Sportsnight, this time with John Motson’s commentary.

The following October, Exeter were drawn against the mighty Liverpool in the two-legged second round of the League Cup. Unsurprisingly we were smashed 5-0 at Anfield but maybe we could nick a goal or two at home. I went early after tea, bought my ticket (probably about £1.50 with a student card) and programme (below) and ambled along to find an anticipated spot on the Big Bank terraces. Before reaching the turnstiles I could hear renditions of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Clearly many Reds fans had made the trip down the M5 – or had they? No, St James’ was rammed with local glory-hunters waving Liverpool scarves, kids screaming in West Country accents for “Kenny, Kenny!” The official gate was 11,740 but it felt like many more.

I had no choice but to squeeze into the Shed, from which I watched as all those household names, from Grobbelaar, Hansen and Thompson to Dalglish, Rush and McDermott, humbled City 6-0. For all the disappointment at the scoreline, I could at least return to my room having seen the best team in Europe in their pomp. It wasn’t all glamour fixtures; the last ones I attended were against Walsall, Doncaster and Southend, each one as boring as one of Dr Coppell’s topology lectures. No matter: I have fond memories of those afternoons and evenings at St James’.

Sadly, Exeter never hauled themselves out of the third tier. On the contrary, unaffordable ground improvements and devastating debts led to the club into administration and out of the League altogether. Celebrity fans like Uri Geller and, allegedly, Michael Jackson, made no difference to our plight. Fortunately, Paul Tisdale’s twelve years as manager oversaw great improvements on the pitch, broadcasting receipts from Cup ties with Liverpool and Man United boosted the coffers and St James’ Park looks almost unrecognisable from the 1980s version, all-seater structures gleaming yet incongruous amidst the city’s backstreet terraces. That's got to be a Good Thing.