Subbuteo football with Mes Que Un Club
Reflections from the Camp Nou 2001
Liverpool’s semi-final 1st leg trip to FC Barcelona’s famed Camp Nou stadium on 5th April 2001 was their most momentous and indeed important European cup tie in 4 years, and since that horror strewn debacle in the Parc Des Princes in Paris, home of Paris St Germain. On that occasion, a Roy Evans managed Liverpool were heavily defeated 3–0 and it could have been far more on a disastrous European semi-final night. Four years later, Gerard Houllier had built a far more robust defensive side that also had pace and attacking threats through the English trio of Emile Heskey, Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler. Defensively, Houllier had recruited Marcus Babbel, Sami Hyypia and Stephane Henchoz to form a solid defensive unit alongside Liverpool native Jamie Carragher. So it was no surprise that Houllier’s Liverpool battled here to a 0–0 stalemate in the magnificent cauldron of the Camp Nou and the 90,832 people lucky enough to say that we were there. For this 1st leg cup tie was a stalemate, the Camp Nou was as glorious as it had been in my dreams, and although watching the game from the very last row of this magnificent history filled footballing arena was akin to watching a faraway game of “Subbuteo” or table football, it was a magnificent joy nonetheless.
The all in white Reds of Liverpool smothered an underwhelming Barcelona in their traditional blue and red halved shirts, not that you could pick these intricate details out a thousand miles from the playing surface! The last row of the top tier after the steep hikes up the gantry’s and walkways of the Camp Nou is a long way from the pitch, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
The Reds of Liverpool were akin to the all white of Real Madrid, Barcelona’s fiercest rivals, but the game as a whole never lived up to the hype or indeed the Real/Barca comparison either. That again is getting ahead of ourselves, but what is clear and will remain clear at the denouement of this article is that Liverpool battled and smothered and dare I say bored Barcelona into a 0–0 draw and the team, as well as the two hardy bands of fans at either end of the stadium and stationed next to the two ginormous overhead scoreboards, were absolutely blooming thrilled with the result!
On the way to this semi-final berth Liverpool had defeated opposition from Romania, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy and Portugal and I had been lucky enough to gain a ticket and a travel package via “Town’s Travel” of Liverpool due to my previous trips with them. To watch Liverpool in FC Barcelona’s cathedral of football, Camp Nou, was as much on the dream wish list as watching the Reds at the Parc Des Princes or the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, and now I was guaranteed to follow these footballing dreams and so soon after visiting Rome’s Olympic Stadium, home to AS Roma. I vividly recall being on a date in nearby Shrewsbury when my telephone rang and Town’s Travel confirmed my place, details, as well as the match ticket price, rising from the originally quoted £25 to an eye watering £60.
£60 in 2001!
All notions of ever lasting romantic love were obviously nixed on this particular date as all I could think of was the Camp Nou, empty and imposing, full and loud and vibrant. La Ramblas, the nearby beach, my day stopover in Salou before the game and my overwhelming desire to visit La Sagrada Familia and Barcelona’s iconic and surrealistic unfinished church.
Unlike on my previous adventures with Town’s Travel I had booked a day package that included a free day before the match itself, and here we stayed in the nearby and beautiful coastal town of Salou and arrived around lunchtime on 4th April. I spent the afternoon and evening mostly alone, first with many long rambling coastal and beach side strolls in the melting sun and with seemingly the entirety of the town to myself and the few hundred or so fellow Reds on the trip. I recall barely seeing anyone else and not even the locals who were far too busy with their siestas and precious familial time. Even in the evening when I went in search of televised European football in a bar it was ghostly quiet save the quiet din of Liverpudlians quietly enjoying life. I had the great pleasure of meeting two lifelong best friends from Liverpool (regular readers of my articles will be only too aware that names are now a long ago memory lost to the mists of time) and we shared a few drinks with the televised football before joining up together in the morning for our afternoon exploration of the city of Barcelona.
21 years on the 3 distinct memories I have of our afternoon dash around Barcelona are (1) La Ramblas simply wasn’t explored enough (and the odd beer was consumed in various bars along the way!) (2) La Sagrada Familia was everything my Salvador Dali obsessed spirit wanted it to be and (3) I ventured into a Lacoste shop as well, when in Spain, do as the Spaniards do. And I didn’t come out for a long time. And my two new Liverpudlian pals had waited for me! Looking back I wished, even then perhaps, that I should have foregone the beauty of Salou for the footballing beauty of the guided tours of Barcelona’s Camp Nou home. Over the years since I’ve seen so many pictorial accounts of how the tour is simply out of this world, but the Camp Nou is not going anywhere so never say never. La Sagrada Familia was everything I hoped for and another reason for a return trip to this magnificent city, but we duly boarded the early coaches for the transfer to the ground and I marvelled at the flags being waved from seemingly every window as the fleet of coaches guided us toward Barcelona’s very own Coliseum. It was early evening and some 3 hours before kick off but the din as we slowly approached the stadium was not of fervent Barca Ultras but of the local inhabitants! Flags waved from every conceivable window, horns blaring and a very definite “welcome” was laid out before us, and we were still some 180 minutes from a ball being kicked in anger.
As is custom for the away supporters on such European nights, the Authorities like to ensure the vast bulk of these visitors are safely in the ground hours before kick off and there we were, stationed at the very pinnacle of Camp Nou with the entirety of the city in our collective sights and after lumbering up an inordinate number of never ending staircases to get there. As is also custom and certainly so at Liverpool games, the seat allocated to you doesn’t exactly represent where you’ll end up sitting! But no matter, I immediately headed for the very back row, donned the two Lacoste jumpers I’d purchased on La Ramblas earlier and was entirely vindicated in doing so. The day’s oppressive heat had been replaced by a very cold evening air and from our open position at the top of Barcelona’s very own Everest, it was a cold evening up there. But I was warmed by a dour, defensive display from the Reds in the all white, and the surreal table football game being played out a long, long way away, and regardless, a footballing dream had truly come true.
The aforementioned defensive quartet of Henchoz, Hyypia, Babbel and Carragher snuffed out the best Barca could muster, and a Spanish side containing a future Reds goalkeeper in the shape of Pepe Reina and a Harlem Globetrotters style all star team of Marquee names such as Frank de Boer, Sergi, Puyol, Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Marc Overmars, Patrick Kluivert and the dangerous Brazilian Rivaldo. With future captain Steven Gerrard swamping the midfield with Dietmar Hamann, the Reds snuffed out Barcelona all evening and whilst I don’t remember Liverpool posing any real attacking threat all night, neither really did Barcelona, and the game ended in a very pleasing stalemate at 0–0.
This would mean a one game shoot out in effect to reach the Final in Germany, and a one game shoot out played out in the Reds home of Anfield.
We made a very bumping landing back into Speke Airport (still a few months away from being renamed “Liverpool John Lennon Airport”) as much to the amusement of my new two new Liverpudlian friends I hit the proverbial roof as the bouncy, hard landing shook me violently from my sleeping state. A couple of weeks work lay ahead (as well as the bragging rights of having watched the Reds at the Camp Nou) and two weeks later I was standing in the back corner of Liverpool’s “Kop End” that was bouncing too, and way, way before kick-off. It’s easy to remember the victories, but I remember this night so vividly: the sheer intake of breath all around The Kop as Rivaldo’s early 40 yard screamer (football cliché alert) swerved and curled and dipped just over Sander Westerveld’s crossbar in the Liverpool goal. It was the shock of the audacity for even Rivaldo to try such an effort and there is an audible sigh of relief as Westerveld fingertips the shot brilliantly over the bar. So too as Luis Enrique screwed a shot just past the post and I remember distinctly the quiet every time Barcelona attacked. There were barely any Spaniards in the crowd (their allocation was barely 1,000 tickets but their section wasn’t completely full either) which surprised me on such a huge occasion and so every time Barcelona had the ball (and they controlled vast swathes of the game), it was eerily quiet and tension filled.
The night’s winning goal and the goal that sent the Reds to the UEFA Cup Final in Germany came from a Patrick Kluivert handball that was as ridiculous as it was obvious, and Gary McAllister coolly scored the resultant penalty kick and just one minute before half-time. Steven Gerrard almost scored a second goal after the half-time break but I still vividly remember the hushed silence descending all around Anfield whenever Barcelona had the ball. The Reds were 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes away from a first European Final in 16 years but as soon as Barca attacked, it was eerily and nervously quiet. A goal for the visitors would send them to the Final on away goals and I remember the explosion of joy and sound and utter relief when the referee blew his full-time whistle and the Reds, against the odds but in a season where they continually overcame such odds, were off to Germany for their first European Final since 1985.
These closing words could seem embellished some 21 years after the fact but I remember so much from that explosion of noise on the referee’s whistle: I remember celebrating like never before and jumping around and into the arms of my travelling companions and Charlie in particular, who I’d already arranged to travel with to Germany IF the Reds made it to the Final. The Kop end was actually bouncing! It was trembling under foot, quite literally, and I’ve only experienced such surreal footballing joy as that on a handful of real, distinct occasions. This was very definitely one of them. As was my thinking as I calmed down a little and waited to exit Anfield. I was here! I was stood on The Kop the night the Reds of Liverpool defeated, fairly and very squarely, the might of Barcelona: Rivaldo, Guardiola, Puyol, Enrique, and all. I also vividly remember walking along Walton Breck Road, a road that runs parallel behind the Kop end, and the singing and chanting and the vibrant display of emotion everywhere in that packed road. I also remember thinking, ala being on The Kop earlier, that I was here! Walking along this famous road after seeing Liverpool win a semi-final of a European competition and that I was as guaranteed as could possibly be that I was eligible for a Cup Final ticket.
Just five weeks later I was indeed clutching that precious Cup Final ticket in a German city called Dortmund and ahead of the game that would soon be known around the footballing world at the time as the “Greatest European Final of All Time”.
This article was originally penned and published on 23rd March 2022 and is one of eight elongated personal stories that pockmark their way through my first self-published book on Liverpool Football Club entitled “Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles”. The photos here are a little “grainy” considering their age and not included in the book but included here for posterity and for personal indulgence and I hope they help paint a wider picture to a fantastic couple of days nearly a quarter of a century ago.
To bring us all up to date here follows a link to my original article and a self-published book I’m immensely proud of together with not one but two Youtube videos of your humble narrator on the banks of the River Severn in beautiful Ironbridge (with the unreal backdrop of the oldest iron bridge in the world) reading this chapter direct to camera. One is full of sunshine but from an impossibly awkward angle and the second minus the sunshine but with some passing canoeists and the beautiful bells of St Luke’s Church commencing proceedings.
"Subbuteo football with Mes Que Un Club" - Version 1
"Subbuteo football with Mes Que Un Club" - Version 2
"7 European Trips with the Mighty Reds of Liverpool" - original article
"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.
The Alan Parsons Project did an album in tribute to Antonio Gaudi, and "La Sagrada Familia" was the name of one of the tracks.