Heartbreak in Paris for the “Two Steve’s”
Paris St Germain 3 Liverpool 0, 10th April 1997
When Liverpool drew Paris St Germain from the pot of three other available teams in the Semi-Final of the 1996/97 European Cup Winners Cup it was greeted, almost unanimously, as the best available draw. They’d avoided crack Italian outfit (footballing cliché defiantly and blatantly used) Fiorentina and Spanish giants Barcelona. Paris St Germain (PSG) were the cup holders but seen as the easier of three very difficult opponents, and the song of the time “Rotterdam” by The Beautiful South was lyrically twisted and heartily sung at every game. Rotterdam was the destination of the Final in just over a month, and “Steve The Taxi Driver” and I were desperately hoping we’d get to experience our third European adventure together with Liverpool this season alone after going to Switzerland for the 2nd Round, 1st Leg encounter with Sion.
Switzerland, France and possibly now Holland, all in the same season. We were on the travel operator’s “list” after our sojourn to Switzerland, and now France, so there was a very good possibility we’d be attending a European Final in Holland.
The Reds just needed to dispose of PSG first and the “Two Steve’s” would be Rotterdam bound.
Steve and I were reunited with Dover and our pick up spot after our journey to Switzerland earlier in the season and safely met with the coach and no doubt eyed with suspicion as we boarded the coach, a coach that by this time had already been on the move for over 6 hours. The coach we joined was a lively one to say the least! And much more so than the wheels that rolled us to Switzerland six months before and after only a few hours, half a dozen at most, we were on the outskirts of Paris and in search of our hotel.
Safely decamped and checked in, the itinerary was simple: After arriving at the crack of Dawn the day was to ourselves to explore Paris if we wished, lunch at 1pm and coach departure to the ground at 4.30pm due to safety concerns.
Our safety!
Overnight stay, then early rolling back in the direction of Dover in the morning. We’d made some friends on the coach (names sadly are now a long ago lost memory) and we duly explored Paris in two bursts, morning and afternoon and had a beautiful day enjoying and exploring Paris in the springtime.
I have only two regrets from my short stay in Paris on this spring day in April 24 years ago. The second can wait, and makes for a wee chuckle, the first is a deep regret as with time limited we saw the best sightseeing Paris could offer except sadly for Notre Dame which was the only place not ticked off my pre-visit list. With lunch cutting the day effectively into two short 3 hour segments we simply dashed from one beautiful sight to another, and I think ably testified to by the array of green Metro tickets glued into my scrapbook! Walking toward the Eiffel Tower in such warm and bright sunshine was a joy but I don’t particularly have a head for heights so found the ascent all rather unpleasant. But strangely enjoyable too. The Arc de Triomphe was everything I hoped it would be, The Louvre and the surrounding Palace “Square” equally high in my affections and after a stroll or two in the sunshine rather than the darkness of the Metro, we trooped back to the hotel for an eagerly awaited lunch.
I distinctly remember so much from the next 5–10 minutes of my day in the sun in Paris as we arrived back at the hotel to a huge chain of Liverpudlian bodies in a queue awaiting Paris’ finest cuisine to be proffered to hundreds of hungry Liverpool fans. Finally the huge door to a banquet type hall was opened and in we trooped, respectfully, keeping the stereotype of the English and their ability to queue perfectly in order and assembled as the servers slowly came to the front of the queue. A roar greeted the removal of the tops of these huge drums of food and we no doubt awaited our slow walk to the front, a quick lunch, then back to the sightseeing. However, the queue began to move rather more quickly than we collectively anticipated as we were towards the back, as one by one Reds filed past us with grave news, well, grave news for the horse anyway.
Yes, the immediate lip smacking rumours that rumbled back towards us of “Curry!” soon began to have a more equine tinge to them as Reds passed up on the opportunity of gnawing on some poor wild beast and slowly but surely this vast reception/banquet/dining hall emptied amid grumblings of both the mouth and the stomach.
I have no idea why Notre Dame was nixed by the overall group but we spent the couple of hours in the afternoon simply strolling alongside the River Seine and enjoying the sunshine. Steve no doubt regaled all and sundry with his tale of being in Paris for the 1981 European Cup Final and buying a ticket on the day for some absurdly cheap figure. He liked to tell that tale did Steve. But then again he was a fair bit older than me and I liked to remind him of this fact every time he trotted his, albeit impressive, story.
We boarded the coach for the trip to the stadium and this is where things got messy, and in more ways than one.
The “lively” coach I had described earlier was now (mostly) on an empty stomach, or rather stomachs full of alcohol and not a curry made almost certainly from a horse. Some genius had stolen a tomato ketchup bottle from a Paris street vendor and as we approached the drop off point, said genius decided to squirt the contents over the people nearest to him on the coach, namely, and mostly, me. So before we could be marched to the stadium by Paris’ finest garbed in their Robocop inspired riot gear, I had to beg and borrow a new pair of trousers and a pair of trainers, so I of course now looked like an incredibly badly dressed man at the most important game of my tomato sauce covered life.
Brilliant.
The walk to the ground was hairy to say the least and even in spite of the local Robocops. We were pelted with pretty much any and everything our Parisian cousins could lay their hands on and I distinctly remember a short period when we were simply in today’s vernacular “kettled”, cramped together and awaiting our path to be restored in the vague direction of the ground. It wasn’t incredibly volatile, just all rather unpleasant and a real portent to the football about to be unleashed upon us in the grand setting of the Parc Des Princes.
Growing up as I did in the late 1970’s but cognitively in the early 1980’s, Saturday afternoon’s in the UK were split between two TV channels, ITV and “World of Sport” or BBC1 and “Grandstand”. These two weekend shows, every weekend, rain or shine, sport or indeed sometimes, especially ironically on “World of Sport”, no real recognisable sport at all, they were both English institutions and you simply flicked between the two stations (or rather my Dad or Brothers in Law did) and you had a plethora of sports: horse racing, badminton, hockey, wrestling, darts, snooker and always with a keen eye on football (which they couldn’t show live due to rights reasons) and rugby, which they could. So I grew up with the legends and the ghosts and the spectacles of England rugby games at the famed Parc Des Princes. Rugby isn’t my game at all and I have zero interest in it but I did as a very young kid and similarly to Twickenham (England’s home stadium) or Murrayfield (Scotland), the Parc Des Princes always seemed somewhat mythical. That French roar, the National anthem, “Allez les Blues”, Bill Beaumont or Will Carling being chaired off as winning England captains on enemy rugby territory. I have no idea or memory if they did, but it makes for a good story. And all good or great stories seemed to gain a little more traction, a little more oxygen, and a little more mystique when contained within the Parc Des Princes.
So I couldn’t wait to be inside this cathedral of sport, even through the missiles being hurled at us as we approached this grand old lady of yore, and even though I looked like a man who’d gotten dressed in the dark. And smelled like tomato sauce. I was in! And early enough to hang my Liverpool banner (Swiss National Flag with a simple “LIVERPOOL” painted through the middle of the white cross) in a prime position right by the corner flag, and took my seat next to Steve. There were three hours or more to kill in a virtually empty stadium, but an empty Parc Des Princes stadium.
And the old lady looked mighty fine to me.
First Half Memories: I vividly recall the Reds (dressed this evening in their alternative cream kit due to a colour clash) starting relatively well and either Fowler scored or had a goal disallowed or hit the post incredibly early in the game (something happened of real promise early on — I can’t recall exactly) but from then on, Liverpool simply wilted and were thoroughly and completely outplayed by PSG. The Hosts were simply too quick, too good and Liverpool were utterly, utterly dreadful. The score at half time was 2–0 to PSG and could and should have been more, but goals from Leonardo and Cauet gave them a precious advantage. Both goals were scruffy give aways by an apathetic defence and their notoriously eccentric goalkeeper David James.
Second Half Memories: I don’t particularly recall this vividly, but no doubt I, as well as the approximately 4,000 fellow Reds in our corner of the Parc Des Princes all said the same mantra: “Keep it to 2–0” or “Keep the tie alive for the 2nd leg”, and if we collectively did, then we almost collectively succeeded, as the game remained at 2–0 until the 84th minute before Jerome Leroy scored a beautiful team goal and danced his celebratory jig right in front us in the corner of that beautiful, and now deafening, stadium. 3–0. Game over. And although there was still a second leg to come back at Anfield, this Semi-Final was over. Rotterdam dream dashed. This PSG team, although not great, was too great for this still fledgling and bloody defensively poor and error prone Liverpool team.
Steve and I grabbed two beers each on our return to the hotel and decamped to our room and of course, with the game being replayed on the main Paris TV Station as soon we switched on that electrical box of doom, well, we had to watch it all over again, didn’t we? The coach journey back to Dover was a quiet affair and thankfully for Steve and I that was our stop, much to the chagrin of everyone else aboard this particular Express Coach to Happy Town! However, we were being picked up by my girlfriend of the time who, whilst incredibly happy to do so, hadn’t realised that with London delays and roadworks, it was a long haul from Portsmouth, so not only had we lost tamely and pathetically 3–0 in a European Semi Final, the majority of my clothes stunk of tomato sauce and I was dressed like some kind of hobo, now my beautiful girlfriend was absolutely bloody furious with me!
’Twas a long journey home and after dropping off Steve and a furious girlfriend I popped into the sanctuary (or so I thought) of my dear old Mum’s, only to be greeted (in a way only she could) “Well that was a bloody waste of money Stephen!”. Thanks Mum! Then, as I tried to explain the heartbreak I was feeling as I desperately wanted to see the Reds in a European Final and this was now decidedly and seemingly off the table this season, my dear old Mum again came to the rescue with:
“At least I saw your flag on the telly! I saw it loads of times!”
I’ve only watched edited highlights of this game and this was back and immediately after returning home and I can confirm it’s front and centre every time there’s a corner kick at our “end”. There’s scant highlights now, even on www.youtube.com so I can’t confirm this self regarding nonsense for certain, but my flag did make fleeting viewings at both a League Cup Final and a UEFA Cup Final, but all that was for the future. In the here and now, the Liverpool team of 1997 had shown their true twisted colours in the Parc Des Princes and they had just 14 days in which to concoct a Mission Impossible. They almost did so too.
But the message had already self destructed in Paris.
I managed to secure 4 tickets for the return leg of the Semi-Final but was let down late in the day and offered my golden hearted friend Gareth the extra 2 tickets the night before and he snapped them up, so Steve and I were good to go. We used to leave around Noon for a night time game at Anfield but we aimed to leave a little earlier purely because it was a Semi-Final and an expected (but not quite) sell out crowd. The one hitch in the plan was to have an argument with my beautiful girlfriend of the time the night before and so hence, at the allotted time, the trusty car was nowhere in sight. This was of course before the advent of mobile telephone’s and I had just one number, a work number, and thankfully she was there and after a mad dash in a taxi I was on my hands and knees on a Portsmouth High Street begging literal forgiveness for being an argumentative arse and could I please have the damn car keys!
“Sorry, please can I have the car keys, darling?”
I actually did go on my hands and knees, and in front of a plentiful supply of shoppers on a busy High Street and beg for the keys to the car.
It was a European Semi-Final after all.
The drive to Anfield that night was a real pleasure as Gareth was on fine form and delivering laughter aplenty, his friend (name escapes me) was stoned as a stoat in the back and chuckling to himself and Steve was predicting we’d beat PSG easily. Rotterdam here we come! I didn’t join in, but the rest had a lovely time with an illegal natural plant and by the time we arrived we were literally flying. Confidence was suddenly sky high for no sensible reason whatsoever but the real joy of the night was seeing Gareth and his friend approaching Anfield for the first time. Not a bad first time eh, a European Semi-Final? Time for a quick drink and as we queued to enter the Kop End Gareth’s friend disappeared albeit briefly, and returned with some booty.
“Just a thanks” he said “for bringing me here tonight”. I naturally brushed it off with a matey nod or “oh, you shouldn’t have!” when quick as a shot my new friend dead panned “Oh. I didn’t buy it. I just saw it lying around and thought you’d like it”.
Blimey.
We had fantastic seats on a Kop End that was bouncing pre kick-off and even more so after 11 minutes and Robbie Fowler’s drive into the bottom corner of the PSG net. Picture top left shows God retrieving the ball and returning to the centre circle as the Reds still needed at least two goals to even force extra time. With perfect symmetry and with now just 11 minutes remaining, skipper Mark Wright scored with a header at the Kop End and the Reds had 11 minutes in which to score again, not concede, and force extra time. They didn’t concede but they didn’t score either and despite the disappointment, the Reds got pretty much what they deserved over the two legs: nothing. It was a spirited fight back, but the first leg in Paris truly showed that this team were again one player, one result, one piece of luck or one piece of proper defending away from being a team that could really challenge for European honours such as these. The 1996/7/8 Liverpool team(s) were a joy to watch from a neutral point of view as they guaranteed goals and free flowing exciting football.
But when their defence wobbled, the entire team often collapsed around them.
Alas.
“Heartbreak in Paris for the “Two Steve’s” also moonlights as chapter 8 within my first self-published book on Liverpool Football Club entitled “Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles”, a book I’m immensely proud of. Here she is, accompanied by my Youtube video reading of this chapter (dressed in obligatory retro Paris St Germain shirt from the mid 1970’s, obviously!) and other assorted fluff and promotional nonsense:
Paris St Germain 3 Liverpool 0, 10th April 1997 - Youtube
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - available via Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.