Originally posted by seand
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"... suitable amount of time and boredom ..."? Boredom?
No - no, Sean. This isn't boredom. Other than the wife, drink, Morrison's own brand chicken wings and spotting all the moments De Niro is clearly reading off an idiot board in Heat, this is what it's all about. Real life is boredom. Posts like your last couple about Red Star and now Honved, is proof of the kinda stuff I live for. Those European nights.
Love it. Great reads. Always discover more stuff about my own fitba experiences when I hear about those of others. Plus a bit of proper insight and proof of real emotional investment, like yours with Dundalk, slows the mass takeover by the Dominos-Budweiser-Gazprom-Playstation fuckwits wh reduce European football to sitting on a gaming chair wearing a Messi shirt - in Basildon - and switching off at half-time because they couldn't take the fact there was only four goals in the first twenty minutes and none of them involved a shot from the half-way line. In the final.
You're talking about the pre-season friendlies drawing more punters than a proper European night. I missed seeing Kaka scoring - at my home ground - in a mid-season friendly, because some tourist stood up in front of me to leave the second their hero David Beckham was subbed by Milan. I need to hear from more people who get it.
E.g., you're absolutely spot on about the years champions of smaller nations went straight into the UEFA Cup. Had Parma or Bayer Leverkusen won the thing outright and we had a European champion who'd never been domestic champion, it would have been hilariously exposing. But that, at the other end of the competition, was just fucking disgusting.
E.g., you've prompted me to realise that Rangers v Red Star game at Ibrox was the last ever European Cup game I attended. Always boring folk about the fact I was there on the first night of the Champions League - Marseille in Govan. But I never realised I went out on a bit of a high with the old Champion Clubs Cup. Didn't attend Sparta Prague eliminating us at Ibrox the following season (saving rabidly so I could return to full-time education) - so Crvena Zvezda, en route to winning it, is the last game I saw live in the European Cup proper. That it was also the last UEFA fixture during which I stood on terracing is suddenly extra resonant.
Though, as you're noticing, everything UEFA resonates for me.
Originally posted by seand
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Originally posted by seand
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I've never seen Honved. Jealous. And yer damn right they're the real deal. Glamour incarnate. They're up there with Spartak Moscow, Olympiacos, Real Betis and Besiktas as one of the few clubs never to have made a European final who I'd still travel a long way to see (Hungary even).
Christ, I used to write magazine articles and books about European football - just so I could chat to folk about their experiences of European nights. The moment WSC stopped the feedback threads under their web pieces I subconsciously felt less impetus to get pieces up there. (conversely, the reason I never previously got involved on the forums was because I knew I'd end up like this ... unable to let it go and write something more "formal") I miss geobra's patter so much it's painful. That man knows his European football.
Get raiding those bloody archives, Sean and get scanning - you might just save an old man's life ...
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