Did any of you catch Glasgow's match today?

Rangers played in Tel Aviv against Apoel Tel Aviv. Quite a good match too.
I was very impressed with the redhead Burke. The man runs like a locomotive and is very hard to stop. Next time Johnstone signs a winger I know just the perfect name.

It was a genuine plesaure to see for "real" (on the tele, actually) the players many of Sesl rosters have, puttting faces to the names.

The result (2-1 for Apoel) was a surprise, the Israeli team was in turmuil in the past month with coach being replaced as well as personal changes on the team's board.

Rangers lost, but at least scored an away goal. It should be very hard to take any points from them at Ibrox. What do you think are the chances for each club to advance on to the next round?

Winger Chris Burke has alot of skill, but not always end product. He is young, so can learn more about the game though.

Rangers defence is weakest link, and Hapoel changed tactics at half time and appeared to put pressure on the Scottish full backs.

2-1 was a fair result. Rangers could have had a penalty in 2nd half, while their Captain Barry Ferguson could have been red carded for lashing out while lying injured.

Rangers do not have a good record at turning round 1st leg defeats, so I say tie is balanced 50/50.
Hapoel will score in Glasgow, so should be a good 2nd leg match.

Hapoel tel Aviv will score in Glasgow, I am sure of it.

I can see 2-1 tonight, and extra time with home advantage helping them go through.

UEFA CUP FINAL - GLASGOW - May 16th 2007

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/6656111.stm

Although Hampden has hosted many of Uefa's finals over 60 years of continental competition, this season's showcase final between Sevilla and Espanyol on Wednesday will be the first time the Uefa Cup has climaxed in Glasgow.

And, as up to 40,000 Spanish fans descend on Glasgow daring to dream that their side will lift the trophy, we take a look back at the previous European finals held at Scotland's national stadium.

Story continues.....

Surprised to read today that 2008 uefa cup final is being held in Manchester.

With last years in Glasgow, that means uefa final being held twice in UK in last 2 years,
so seems surprising.

Well done Glasgow Rangers for making uefa cup semi final, beating Sporting Lisbon 2-0 away from home.

Meanwhile, when I went to bed Bayern Munich needed 2 goals in last 6 minutes of extra time to go thru - and they did it.
Unbelievable.

Bayerns name is on the uefa cup this year for sure.

... or maybe not after tonights surprising result in uefa cup.

Hey all,

Cheers from a newly returned SESL manager. It must've been closer to a 10-year absence but it's good to be back, thankfully some things in life are forever and SESL is one of them :-)

Anyway. As it happened I ended up at the UEFA cup final in Manchester in May. Mark urged me to write a report from the trip so here goes!

Edit: I'll post a few pictures later.

P.S. Very sorry - it's veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long. Not surprised if no one manages to read it through - just a quiet day at work today :-)

Life's full of surprises - sometimes even positive. I was enjoying late spring as you do, busy with school stuff and other things to do in order to graduate in the summer. Being a freelance/part time/full time sports writer for my local newspaper I'd managed to register on the Uefa media portal (what a usability nightmare that is). Sure thing I had applied for a ticket for the Manchester UEFA Cup final between Glasgow Rangers and FC Zenit St. Petersburg but never thought I'd get one. So I kind of forgot about it.

Then my boss rang me one afternoon, saying they'd called from the Finnish FA to check if I really worked for the paper, saying that there aren't that many people going from Finland so they're going to put my application forward.

This was two weeks before the game. At that point I thought it's time to see if it would actually be possible to get to England on a student price and found out the regular airlines were charging some 700-800 euros for a return to Manchester. No deal - my student budget didn't exactly approve. Thankfully there's Ryanair who had one of their "pay taxes only" offers on right then and for a couple of days still.

That caused a dilemma. A return to London was some 70 euros altogether minimum which isn't a lot for a return flight, but it's quite much to waste in case you're not getting to the match after all. I weighed the risks and came to the conclusion that since our FA was positive about the ticket it'd be a much more probable scenario to not book the flights, get the ticket and then miss out on the game because of that than book flights and not get a ticket. So I booked.

Thankfully.

A week later came the notice that my request was approved and I had indeed gotten a ticket to the game! Yay!

That lead to a VERY busy week doing two weeks' school things in a week but never mind, life's busy sometimes. So the next week came and time to get going.

Thinking about it later I could've still planned the whole thing a little bit better. I was flying in on the Wednesday eve, arriving in Stansted at 11pm or so - just enough time to catch the last train to London and get a cab to my hostel, finally getting to sleep at 2am. The next morning I got up early, made my way to the station and jumped on a train towards Sheffield and then Sheffield to Manchester - again the laws of travelling on a shoestring budget, ie you lose time when you save money. Nevertheless I arrived in Manchester at around four when kickoff was 19.45 so there was plenty of time.

The note about planning was pointing to realising that had I moved the trip one day earlier, arriving on Tuesday and flying back on Friday instead of the Saturday flight I now took, I could've taken part in the pre-game things as well and got to enjoy the match experience even more, but that was just a small glitch.

Walking out of the Piccadilly station it hit me immediately. This kind of feeling of a great sporting event, anticipation so thich in the air you could almost touch it. The whole central Manchester was full of people in blue shirts - incidentally also Zenit's colours, although the vast majority of fans there were from Glasgow. Later it was estimated that some 100000 Rangers fans had made their way down south just to take part in the party even if they didn't have tickets to the match itself. The weather was nice, with the sun shining and warm temperature, so it was the perfect setting. And it was amazing how much beer you can have in one city! Indeed it seemed some of the fans had been there for days already but showed no signs of tiring.

I wandered around for an hour or so, quickly scrapping my plans of stopping for a pint - there was no way as all the pubs and bars were shot full. Instead I decided to concentrate on work, talking to fans and shooting around with the camera. Needless to say it wasn't hard to get people to pose for the camera. I have to say - I've rarely had trouble with British accents but for some of the Glaswegians I just couldn't work out what they were saying. Still everyone seemed to be in a good mood and enjoying the occasion.

Some two hours to go 'till kick off I decided to head for the stadium. I'd been there once for a tour and took the bus, but since it was signposted from the station and lots of others were walking I figured it must be walkable, and eventually it took some 20-25 minutes, no longer. This meant I arrived at the ground well on time, too, which is nice. I hate being in a rush and having to worry if I'm going to be late or not. Now there was plenty of time to get my ticket, talk to more fans, enjoy the atmosphere and have a glimpse of the VIP guests arriving - Denis Law got the loudest cheer when he arrived.

Seven o'clock and time to get into the ground. Found my entrance, went in, found my seat and watched the teams and fans warm up. The ground was already filling up nicely and the two sets of fans making good noise. Officially both teams were given some 13000 tickets each but in practice that only applied to the Zenit fans, for the rest of the ground was manned by Glasgow supporters. At this point I have to say I'm a big fan of the City of Manchester stadium. It impressed me the first time and even more now. Some of the modern grounds are dull as a cow (are cows dull? I don't know) - just imagine Middlesboro, Darlington, Doncaster - very lame efforts that lack any kind of character. The COMS (Wembley and Emirates just a couple of others) is a prime example on how you don't need a 100-year history to make a ground have character. It's very well designed, works like a charm, there are no seats with a poor view of the pitch and it looks very nice, too. So it was a perfect venue for this match.

Of the European competitions the Champions' League tends to be the one to attract most headlines and justifiably so, but in a way the Uefa cup is more of 'an European' tournament. The CL is for the biggest, richest and most famous clubs, while the Uefa cup gathers very good teams from all around the continent, and that might be one reason why I personally sometimes even prefer it to the CL. (My team MyPa having done well in there over the last decade naturally might affect my feelings too :-)) This I also noted in the piece I wrote afterwards.

Start warm up, end warm up, have a break, and then everything was set for the match. Pyrotechnics, club logos hanging from huge balloons, pompous music, it sure was a grand entrance.

The game itself was entertaining yet not the best game of football you'll ever see. Much was because Rangers were happy to keep defending and it looked like all they were aiming for was the penalty shoot-out. To be fair, as Walter Smith said, it was how they got into the final in the first place, so why change. However this lead to Zenit keeping most of the ball, and lead by the marvellous Andrei Arshavin, managed to create most of the chances.

However it looked like they couldn't break the Rangers defence. They needed 72 minutes before Arshavin played Denisov loose and he scored to make it 1-0. Rangers had to open up, and four minutes into the added time Zyrianov made it 2-0.

After the game it was routine stuff: press conference, walk back to the station and jump on the train to Huddersfield where I was staying for the night. Except that it wasn't so easy: the whole station was clogged up by Rangers fans living in Northern England, and once I finally managed to get on a train it was so full there was hardly space to stand. But it's a short ride anyway, and accompanied by some good banter between the fans it went fast.

Later on I heard about the trouble there had been in the centre and the stabbing at the stadium but saw no sign of any trouble myself, thankfully.

Flying back on the Saturday meant I had the Friday to spend on Yorkshire, so I moved to Sheffield where a friend of mine currently lives; as he was busy in the afternoon I visited Sheffield FC, the world's oldest football club, for an article, chatting with the hospitable manager / director Dave McCarthy who - as I found out earlier - had played in Finland in his playing career. In the afternoon I joined my mate, had a quiet barbeque and a couple of the fine English beers I've been so longing for ever since leaving Sheffield three years ago, got some sleep, took the train back to London in the morning and then flew back home in the evening.

And that was this spring's second football trip to England. I've usually done one, in the spring, but with a chance like this who could've passed it :-)

Good write up Tap - nice on


Rock on, indeed!