The Sound of the Crowd
If you're not a Scot (or a Mancunian for that matter), you may be forgiven for not knowing that Glasgow Rangers are taking on Zenit St Petersburg at Manchester City's stadium this evening with the EUFA cup going to the winners.
This has resulted in the biggest invasion of England by Scots since the diminutive Bonnie Prince Charlie made it down to the Midlands back in the day. They started arriving yesterday and last night the centre of Manchester was awash with blue. As I drove to work past the stadium this morning at 8:30am there were pockets of fans wrapped in Union Jacks and swigging from cans of lager.
I got in work at 9:00am and noticed coaches of fans arriving and parking up near Lancashire Cricket Club - miles away from the centre and the ground. All day they came; ejaculating well-oiled 'Gers followers who promptly urinated wherever they could before heading towards Manchester centre clutching cans, bottles, flags and banners.
By 1:30 pm they were marching down the road outside my office and I took the video above with my mobile phone (hence the quality). I had to leave work early to ensure I could get home as my journey takes me onto the Manchester inner ring road and past the ground via the designated route from the City centre. A bit of delay but not much and it was great seeing all the supporters enjoying themselves in the sunshine.
Here are some of them in Albert Square enjoying the sunshine.
The atmosphere has been great all day with upwards of 150,000 entering the City and clearing the shops of every drop of alcohol they could find. Sadly, as the game kicked off, the big screen in the fan's zone in Piccadilly failed and it 'kicked off' there as well. As I write riot police have been brought in and fans are throwing bottles and traffic cones.
The sad thing is, this will be a minority of dickheads. The same type of dickhead you get following any football club.
It's been a great day for Glasgow and a great day for Manchester Sadly this minority of dickheads will probably be getting all the media attention tomorrow.
+++ UPDATE +++ +++UPDATE +++ +++ UPDATE +++
For some reason I can't leave a link to this so you'll have to cut'n'paste.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7401814.stm
QUOTE "Fans who had been waiting in Piccadilly Gardens all day were unimpressed [when the big screen in Piccadilly failed].
One said: "This is absolutely ridiculous - there's Rangers fans throwing balls** and cans at each other because the game's not on.
"We've been sat here since 12 o'clock waiting on the game coming on. The coverage started at seven o'clock and then five minutes later the game's off.
"It's an absolute shambles, shame on Manchester, shame on Manchester - it's let the country down." UNQUOTE
"Shame on Manchester"? How much have I as a taxpayer forked out to accomodate fans who have turned up without tickets regardless of advice given? I've forked out to provide facilities and policing and ambulance services and probably hospital beds for people who quite frankly had been drinking since early morning (see above).
Glasgow Rangers, you were great today. Tonight, a minority of dickheads were a disgrace.
And now I hear a Zenit fan was stabbed outside the ground.
I thought today was going to be different to my experiences with Manchester United playing Celtic. I thought it was going to be a cheery affair.
Ah well.
Still, thanks for the slagging off. We tried but obviously we're crap
After all, it's a doddle dealing with 150,000 in an area that can hardly cope with 50,000 om a Saturday.
Shame on Manchester?
**Lost in translation? ;-)
5 comments:
Personally I would never have invited them. Individually, and I know a good few they're fine decent upstanding citizens but put them in a group and you get this bizarre tribal effect thing.
Well said. I particularly liked this comment from that BBC News item...
Another supporter added: "The people of Manchester have been fantastic - but the officials behind this are a total disgrace."
The fact that when the big screen did fail - and, you know, shit happens - they had buses to take fans to an alternative screen over at the velodrome suggests that the officials were far from a disgrace in my opinion.
I did a post about the day .... the atmosphere was amazing and I was so shocked to find how quickly the mood turned. It was a a huge undertaking by MCC
You have some awesome photos of Manchester on here, have enjoyed strolling through your gallery :-)
On the day I was more interested in Hull City whupping Watford but having lived in Scotland I was keenly aware of the latent nastiness that is characteristic of hardcore Rangers fans. The Emperor Hadrian had the right idea and we should have stopped the tartan army at the border or more realistically the authorities shoiuld have invited ticketless Rangers fans to a huge free Big Screen party at Ibrox Park. It is easy to blame the nasty Rangers fans but the police in both Glasgow and Manchester should have known better and should have been able to predict the despicable behaviour that occurred in the name of football! Bollocks!
YP, Rangers actually did have a giant screen freebie at Ibrox Park. That too was oversubscribed. A colleague at work went down to Manchester with ma, pa and sister(all season ticket holders) and was thoroughly disgusted with the behaviour of some so-called fans. He described them just as "scum, racist, sectarian scum!"
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