Prologue

(Written in role as Ray from the movie: In Bruges.)

This fucking place.

Do you ever get that feeling that people aren't always who they say they are? I think of Ken like that. He's climbing the narrow winding steps to the top of the tower. He does it every day. And I just freeze my arse off down here, waiting for him to throw himself off again; like he does every day.

It's a few degrees below zero and the tourists, like lemmings, are pouring out of the chocolate shops with string-handled paper bags stuffed with boxes of strawberry cremes — or whatever the hell Belgians put in their chocolate. Give me a mars bar or a beer over that muck, every day of the week.

Harry says this place is like some sort of fairytale — but I don't see it myself. Sure, there are cobbled streets and that, but I don't see fucking Hansel and Gretal running around scattering m&m’s all over the place, or little red riding hood skipping along with a tiny picnic basket hanging from her skinny elbow!

Sure, there are a few tourists who look like Shrek or Fiona (after dark). And there’s a large fella who looks like Dumbo — if we're going to include Disney movies. But a fairytale, Harry? I just don't see it.

After Gent, we head West for our final match in the beautiful city of Brugge. Darren's managed the itinery like an over zealous Saga holiday consultant, so unsurprisingly, we're bang on schedule.

Our hotel is modern. Its close to the central transport hub and not for the first time on this trip, our vista is a landscape of rusty meandering railway tracks.

Tonight's opponents for Cercle Brugge, are Westerlo FC. They are using the hotel as a base before they travel to the stadium.

We don't see them, but they've left their kit casually in the reception area.

Reception is a moody teenager's bedroom and we pick our way across the minefield of sports bags and expensive football boots. We push on through the heavy glass doors out onto the icy steps of the hotel.

Outside, the temperature is dropping quickly and there is a cold wind exhaling icily like an angry girlfriend. We're thankful that the bus station is close by.

The ride to the ground is barely five minutes but when we arrive the place looks deserted — as if the stadium has been abandoned or something. It's about half an hour before there are any signs of life when a few fans, shielded from the cold in green and black scarves, drift into sight.

The Jan Breydel Stadion has seen better days. It looks like a concrete monolith. The main stand is divided into two very distinct halves. The dark blue and black of Club Brugges on one side; the green and black of Cercle on the other.

It's clear from the relative sizes and structure of their club shops that Club are the bigger club in the city. Whereas the Blauw-Zwart boast a modern glass fronted window near the entrance, adorned with shirts, scarves and hats; Cercle have to make-do with a rickety temporary wooden hut hidden at the far end of the main stand. The only window in this shop is in the door itself.

Inside, the shop is rammed with merchandise. It’s as if the club shop has just downsized from an 8-bedroom mansion to a caravan.

I emerge with a green scarf and a pin-badge. I don't particularly like the hats, so I make do with my black Standard Liege beanie.

The Noord Stand is above a dark and run-down concourse. They've really let this place go; it's clear to me that it won't be here much longer.

Our beers are served in collectable plastic cups and I pocket four before the match starts. We both have some chips to keep us going and head up to our seats.

It's a small crowd and the vast South stand is almost entirely empty. Around us, in the North stand, everybody is standing; nobody is sitting on the shallow plastic seats which are filthy dirty. It looks like they haven't been cleaned in months.

We've picked out a couple of Cercle players to scout tonight. Wearing 10 for Cercle, the Brazilian, Felipe Augusto, has been signed for 3 million euros from Corinthians.

Augusto is one of the worst centre-forwards we have ever seen. We both agree on that. His runs off the ball take him into congested areas instead of spaces and his control is awful. When he does get a chance, from the penalty spot on the stroke of half-time, his shot is tame and straight at the goalkeeper.

Then, at the start of the second half, Augusto misses from a couple of yards out and right in front of us. It’s a terrible miss but the ball stays in play. We’re still laughing when Lawrence Agyekum turns in the resulting pull-back before VAR rules the goal out.

Alan Minda comes on mid-way through the second half and with his first touch he produces the only touch of class in the whole match. Finding himself in room just inside the box on the left hand side, he cuts inside three players before rifling a low shot inside the near post.

We’re both grateful when the whistle goes because we’ve gotten so cold. The result flatters Westerlo a little and Cercle will rue their missed chances.

Erick Nunes, on loan from Fluminense, is Cercle’s stand out player.*

As we wait for our bus back to the hotel, a couple of English guys who think we’re Belgian ask us if we know when the next bus is coming. “Yeah mate,” Darren replies. “It’s here in a couple of minutes.”

Once on the bus, we share stories of our football travels with the lads from Grimsby. They’re both teachers, like me, and make a point of doing at least one trip each season.

We have our final beer of the trip in the hotel bar and plan a morning seeing the sights.

Our final morning doesn’t really go to plan. Somebody has forgotten to tell Bruges to wake up so the only thing we can do is get a coffee. The chocolatiers are all closed until about 11am, so we decide to head back to the ferry an hour or two early.

It’s a beautiful place though and we plan to go back. Maybe next time, it will be warmer?

Epilogue

I follow these two eejits along the edge of the canal. Did nobody tell them that Bruges is dead on a Sunday morning?

They’re English. That figures.

They head into a coffee shop and then decide against hanging around. Unlike me, they can leave.

‘And I realised, fuck man, maybe that's what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in fuckin' Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn't die. I really really hoped I wouldn't die.’ Colin Farrell as Ray in, In Bruge (Martin McDonagh)

Ghent, Belgium.

William Cody is a long way from home. He grips his Springfield rifle model 1866 tightly in his rough, calloused hands as he sits on the waist-high advertising hoarding that stretches continuously around the pitch.

His rifle is as impotent as a tumbleweed in a tornado. There are no buffalo to shoot here.

William smiles to himself, listening to the crowd chanting his name. ‘Buffalo, Buffalo’ they appear to be calling out as one, over and over. He jumps up onto the hoardings, balancing like a gymnast on a beam. The unseen showman snaps his rifle to his shoulder and takes aim.

Sitting Bull charges in, riding bareback. His war bonnet, an array of tightly bound feathers, shimmering in the midday sun. The crowd gasp in unison and then fall silent for a moment before roaring their approval. They have only read about this in their books and comics.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West is in town.

The day gets off to a bad start. First, the hotel is so busy that we can’t find a table (or even a seat) to sit and eat our breakfast at. Then Darren finds a parking ticket on the front window of his car. It’s clearly a scam though because we parked legally in the hotel car park.

We’re both hanging a bit from a heavy night in Dusseldorf and this is all we need.

It’s a quiet first half an hour as we head West. Our destination this morning is the Belgian port city of Ghent in northwest Belgium, at the confluence of the Leie and Scheldt rivers.

We’ve driven past KAA Gent’s stadium half-a-dozen times on previous trips. We have always been determined to go there. Today, Gent are at home, so we’re off to the lunchtime match against the bottom side, Beerschot.

It’s 3 hours by car and the sat-nav sends us up through Holland via Eindhoven and back down into Belgium from the north, close to Antwerp.

Despite the icy conditions (there is a little snow lingering on the verges of the road) Darren makes good time. We’ve stopped at a services along the E35 and taken on some caffeine from a a reluctant coffee machine. It’s like a scene out of Red Dwarf as the stroppy machine refuses to dispense Darren’s coffee, or accept his Euros. I experience no such issues when it is my turn.

Gent’s Planet Group Arena is a modern glass fronted stadium with a contemporary design and aesthetic architecture. In the sunshine, light bounces off the sleek black glass like a glossy metropolis office building.

We visit the club store and I buy a blue and white bobble hat and pin badge. The Gent logo features a Native American in full headdress which is controversial these days to put it mildly.

Inside the stadium, we have to queue up for a charge card to put credit on before we can buy anything. We put 50 euros on the card and get ourselves a coffee and some food.

We both get some chips which are covered in meat and gravy. It is like having the filling from a steak pie ladled on top of the best fries that you could ever wish to eat. Lovely.

The capacity of The Planet Group Arena is just over 20,000, although it looks much bigger than that from the outside. It’s a single tier stadium around a raised hybrid grass pitch. Surrounding the pitch, which feels like it is on an island, is a wide path -about the width of a narrow road.

Despite going behind twice, KAA Gent find a way to win the match, scoring a 90th minute penalty to make it 3-2 in the sunshine. It’s a real family atmosphere and the people around us are friendly.

Today’s win solidifies Gent’s position in the top 6, with just a few games left to go before the league splits into 3 for the play-off season.

We beat the rush back to the car and head off in the direction of our final destination, Brugge.

Epilogue

The crowd have all gone home and the light is fading. Bill lays on his back, staring up at the cobalt sky. A smile creeps across his bearded face. Here, they still shout out his name. Here, they continue to cheer. This he concludes, must be heaven.

William Frederick Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917), known as Buffalo Bill, was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman. His well received visit to Ghent with the Buffalo Bill Wild West show in the early 20th Century inspired the club to take on the ‘Buffaloes’ nickname and controversial Native American logo.

Prologue

Liege, Belgium. Night.

Georges Simenon, the writer, crosses the eternal bridge and examines the wreckage. The industrial buildings lay in ruins for as far as the eye can see. A red-brick chimney stack, which once looked upon Liege proudly, has crumbled, breaking down of its own accord like a decaying tooth. The concrete flyovers have been indecently sliced through and the rusted steel rebars jut out and twist grotesquely downward like hardened rusty veins.

This place. This inferno.

He loved it when he was a child. He loved it when the Germans marched into town in 1914. There were no rules back then. His father cheated. His mother cheated. Everyone cheated. Back then, Georges stole everything he could lay his little thieving hands on. It was in his blood after all.

This bridge. This devil’s backbone.

Georges looks down at the lusty swarm of Liege hell-raisers jumping off public transport, pissing in the street, climbing the icy grass bank and hurdling the low barrier onto the footpath. In swathes they pass quietly on either side of him. Walking shadows. He turns and follows. On the north side of the river, the stadium glows like a child’s night-light. Once more into the fire. Once more into the Hell of Sclessin.

It’s been a long first day of the trip. We have been travelling for seven hours when we arrive by car in Liege.

Our hotel is in the centre of town, sandwiched between a McDonalds and a KFC, adjacent to the Opera House. We park in the underground car park, two levels down.

Within twenty minutes of checking in, we are heading back out into the city on foot. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s busy.

The shops are closing up for the day and the bus queues are getting longer. Our bus stop is only a short walk from the hotel and we wait for about ten minutes before our single decker arrives. Alongside a dozen or so Standard Liege fans, wearing red, we hop on.

Snaking alongside the river, our bus takes us down cobbled streets and past the railway station. The station is magnificent with it’s herring boned structure as we pass underneath it.

Our stop is in Haut-Pré which is just across the river from the football stadium. We step cautiously off and follow the crowd.

Men are taking a piss under the bridge in the squelchy shadows as the ice thaws beneath their freezing feet. Pissing wherever you want to seems common place here.

On the other side of the busy street, fans are climbing up a muddy grass bank to get to the bridge. We guess it must be a long way to walk around, so we follow them up the embankment. At the top of the greasy slope is a low metal railing and we scramble over it onto the bridge itself.

Beneath us the inky-black Meuse river flows angrily. On its rippling surface, the reflection of the bright white stadium lights shimmer like kitchen foil.

There is a subdued, almost eerie whisper as we cross the Meuse and descend gradually into Sclessin.

Tonight there is quite the police presence. Genk are in town and they are flying high at the top of the league. They have sold out their allocation and I wonder if there will be some trouble.

We follow the path around the stadium and realise quite quickly that we will have to walk almost all the way around it to get to our entrance. The club shop taunts us from inside the metal fence. We will come back at the end of the game for our hats and for our scarves.

Both of us are gasping for a beer so we queue up at one of the crowded outside bars. When we reach the front, the barman bluntly refuses to serve me until I remove my red and white ‘LOSC’ hat, which I have totally forgotten that I am wearing. Unfortunately, even when I remove my hat, he still won’t serve me. This bar - it turns out - only takes pre-paid beer tokens.

We bustle our way through the crowd and enter, via a turnstile, into a little fanzone where there are a couple of food and drink vans.

We fill up on chips and lager before climbing the steepest staircase of any ground that I have ever visited. When we get to the summit, we are rewarded with an excellent view.

Before kick-off the home end erupts into a colourful cacophony of flares, firecrackers and fireworks. The smoke engulfs us as the KRC Genk fans and the Liege pyromaniacs at our end set off their flares too.

It’s a good crowd (19,619) and this is the ideal fixture to get our weekend off to an exciting start.

The game flies past. It’s a pretty even match and there are plenty of chances at both ends. The 17-year-old Konstantinos Karetsas, playing in the number 10 role for Genk, catches my eye as a player to watch out for. He’s technically gifted and intelligent. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the Premier League sooner rather than later.

We head off a few minutes before the final whistle with Genk 2-0 up. After the match we visit the club store and I have a piss in the outside urinals which is a unique experience. Darren takes photos, which I find a little odd, and then we catch the last few minutes on a TV in a nearby bar.

The journey home is eventful because we have decided we can walk back to town. It’s 6km in a straight line - but even so it’s only a decision that two drunk blokes can make.

Things take a turn for the worse when we realise that Belgium has gone and stuck a bloody great big hill in our way. Even so, we make a good fist of the climb despite the lack of Sherpas to guide us up the ‘mountain.’

Finally, exhausted and regretting our hasty decision to walk, we arrive back in Liege. The party-goers are just heading out wearing their glad-rags and the town looks primed for a night of hedonistic debauchery. We continue on our way. Neither of us are in the mood to party tonight.

Epilogue

Georges follows the two English idiots up the hill and away from the stadium. He imagines the Jules Maigret novel that he would never get to write.

Maigret arrives at the square on top of the hill at sun-up. His pipe is clamped against his bottom jaw as he exhales great clouds of smoke into the blood-orange dawn sky. He is a Chiaroscuro image, a silhouette on a photographer’s negative.

As a younger detective, Maigret had worked in Paris. He had loved it there. The cases he had worked. From the opulence of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to the Bohemian streets of Montmartre, Maigret had seen it all. To be back here, in Liege, was just about right. He felt at home.

First Maigret examines the body of the man in the red hat. He is plump, about 5’ 7’’ and wearing jeans. On his feet he has blue plimsoles with three white diagonal stripes stitched onto the canvas uppers. His lips are blue. His throat is slashed.

Maigret removes the hat from the dead man’s head. “This man is French,” he pronounces confidently holding aloft the hat with LOSC written on the side in white letters. “This man is from Lille!”

The other dead-man is half-hidden behind a refuse bin. One leg is broken, twisted behind his lower back and blood has dried on the cobbles close to where the remains of his skull now rests.

Georges Simenon sighs. He expects that he will imagine the full novel tonight. He even thinks of a title, The Hell of Sclessin.

As he watches both men stumble into the lobby of the Hotel Ibis he smiles inwardly, those two English idiots really should have caught the bus.

Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (13 February 1903 – 4 September 1989) Belgian writer, most famous for his fictional detective Jules Maigret.

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Prologue

Joseph scratches wildly at his burning legs. The grey felt suit that he is wearing is tormenting his skin just behind his knees. He bellows angrily inside his empty art studio but his guttural roar is not enough to stem the pain. He begins to tear the cloth away, first of all in large candy floss clumps and then in spindly threads. Joseph’s raw flesh is at once grateful for the cool air that brushes around his raging limbs as he stands naked from the waist down.

Torn out felt is strewn across the studio floor like cut hair in a barber’s shop. Slowly, Joseph turns and hangs the jacket carefully on an old wooden coat hanger. The bent metal hook is hung on a rusty nail which he has hammered into the wall behind his desk. He can tailor the suit trousers again. He is the master of fat and felt. He is the artist, the activist, Joseph Beuys.

Beneath the University windows Fortuna fans scurry past, heading for the U-Bahn and the football stadium. The chill wind nibbles excitedly at their faces. Their chins are buried deeply into their red and white scarves which are tied loosely around their necks. Some have spent the last few hours at Altstadt drinking loudly in the busy bars serving Alt Bier. Others have stood outside, huddled together on the cobbled streets drinking theirs. The dark brown beer (fermented in the old way) takes the edge off from the freezing temperatures as their thoughts turn towards tonight’s match with Hertha.

Joseph will join them later. He is not really a football fan but he goes occasionally. He is a child of Kleve to the North-West. Fortuna is his team too. Tonight he will walk silently among them.

Three sheets to the wind

We have spent most of the day in Dusseldorf in an Irish bar watching English and German football. And, by the time we need to head off to the stadium, both Darren and myself are three sheets to the wind.

Our drive from Liege to Dusseldorf has gone smoothly. It’s only been an hour and a half since we left Liege and already we have found our hotel close to the central train station, parked up (more on that in #9) and checked in. Darren has changed more quickly than Superman in a phone-booth while I’m still stitching myself into my black cotton long-johns. I look like a fat ballet dancer!

On our way into the city we noticed a Woolworths - so once I am dressed we set off in that direction. For us in the UK, Woolworths is a distant memory. It’s where we went to buy our music records in the 80’s. It’s where we went to buy our children their toys in the early 2000’s. We wonder around the store for about 10 minutes. It’s full of cheap stuff. It’s mostly tat. We don’t buy anything.

The Altstadt greets us like an old friend. This is the ‘longest bar’ in Europe and we intend to explore every inch. The first bar we see is an Irish Pub and we guess correctly that they will have the football on. Arsenal are playing Leicester away and Darren has half an eye on the game as a Liverpool fan. Arsenal could close the gap at the top if they win today, putting pressure on Liverpool who play tomorrow.

Eating horse cock again

We neck 3 pints of Konig Pilsner, which is going down better than the cha cha slide at a Butlins holiday park, before we decide to go in search of some food. I find it in the form of a bratwurst. Darren takes a photo and sends it to the group chat. “Blakey’s eating horse cock again” is his message and it’s not long before one of our mates has added some ‘spunky’ artwork to the photo and sent it back.

Across the street a bar is filling with Fortuna supporters so we head over to see what all the fuss is about. Half pint glasses are being rapidly filled at the bar and carried on trays by the staff. I get in the way of one of them by mistake and he tells me in no uncertain terms to stand out of the way. This is alt bier. It is brown - like a real ale - but it doesn’t taste like it at all. Find out more about Altbier here

Honestly, I don’t mind Altbier but it hasn’t got either of us hooked. After a glass each, we head back out in search of another stein. We poke our heads inside a couple more bars before deciding to head back to the bosom of the Irish Pub and the teat of Konig Pilsner. Fuck me…it’s got busy!

Standing room only

The barmaid tells us with a laugh that we have lost our seats and that we shouldn’t have left. She’s not wrong. The pub is heaving with people now and it’s standing room only. Luckily, we commandeer a couple of bar stools and find some room where we can watch the afternoon’s football.

The 1980’s television show ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet’ was set here in Dusseldorf. A group of builders, mostly from Newcastle, had travelled to Germany for work as unemployment had reached the unprecedented figure of 3 million in the UK.

Nayim from the halfway line

Today in an Irish Pub in Dusseldorf, the Geordies are back. It’s a stag do and the lads are dressed as famous international footballers. The Italian playmaker Andrea Pirlo is the groom. He’s currently ordering the Guinness in a thick Geordie accent and passing the tray to his best man, the former Arsenal and England keeper David Seaman. He’s too young to remember our ‘Nayim from the halfway line’ chant so Darren and I give up and watch the Bayern Munich match instead.

To be honest, the next hour or two is a bit of a blur. We leave the bar and head for the U-Bahn which is packed. The first train is too full so we wait for another to arrive before we can get on. It’s like an oven on the train but thankfully it’s only a couple of stops to the stadium.

Fortuna Dusseldorf away

Up until now, we have kept our blue and white scarves hidden. Tonight, we are with Hertha Berlin. Tonight it’s Fortuna Dusseldorf away.

As we walk around the outside of the stadium, I can’t help thinking that it looks like a huge metallic box with a veil draped over it. It’s massive but it reminds me more of a shopping mall than a football stadium. That’s not to say that it isn’t impressive. It is. It’s pretty amazing to be fair.

We join the queue of Hertha fans waiting to get in and security are in no rush to let us through. Around us there is some curiosity about the two Englishmen who are heading into the away end. We tell them about our trip to the Olympiastadion a couple of years ago and how much we enjoyed their culture. We sing a few lines of some Hertha songs which they love and we’re welcomed into the brotherhood of blau und weiß in an instant.

Standing in the Ostkurve Hertha BSC

As soon as I am inside the stadium I tuck into a pilsner and a cheese pretzel that lasts me until almost half-time. Our seats are high up in the corner of the away end which is filled with 2,500 travelling fans and ultras. There’s plenty of blue and white flags alongside the obligatory ‘Ostkurve Hertha BSC’ banner strapped between the upper and lower tier.

This is a vast colosseum trapped inside an upside down metal box. It’s meccano beams and rafters support the retractable roof like the inner workings of a James Bond villain’s high-tech lair. The sky is visible through the gaping cleft above us as the players emerge onto the green felt pitch far below. This is a Bundesliga 2 game in a 66,500 capacity all-seater stadium. This would be the second biggest stadium in the Premier League if it were in England. Tonight’s match has an attendance of 38,912 which means that 3 sides of the ground are almost full.

The match flies past in a drunken blur. We sing the songs that we know and chat to the people around us. The two guys stood in front of us are Karlsruhe SC fans and they tell us about the special relationship between Hertha and Karlsruher. It’s not unusual, we are told, for fans of each team to travel to away games for the other team. When they play against each other, they sing each other’s songs and drink together. It’s a far cry from the heated derbies that we have in the UK.

The road to nowhere

Against the run of play, Fortuna come back from 1-0 down to win the match 2-1. In the away end there is no relenting, no self-pity, no sorrow. The songs continue to be sung and the team are applauded by the Ultras.

Outside of the stadium, free buses are waiting to transport the away fans somewhere. We don’t know where they are going - we’ve got no way of knowing - but we hop on a bus anyway. The singing is louder on the bus than at any time inside the stadium and we enjoy the atmosphere as we embark on the road to nowhere.

Thankfully, the bus pulls up outside Dusseldorf airport about 30 minutes later and we know we can get back to the city from here. It’s simple enough to hop on a train heading back to the main station and we are soon sat at our hotel bar enjoying another couple of pints before heading off to bed.

Tomorrow is the final leg of this trip. We are travelling to Ghent for a midday kick-off and then on to Brugge for an evening match. We’d better get some rest.

Epilogue

Joseph has enjoyed the game more than he thought he would. The itchy felt suit has given way to a cotton one which is hidden beneath his great winter coat. On his head, Joseph wears a Homburg hat which he has crafted himself out of felt.

Gracefully he lifts the Homburg off his head like Bogart, unfurls his wings and ascends into the night sky. He flew during the war. He remembered the freedom. He remembered the horror.

His plane had been shot down from high above the Crimean front. The Tartar tribesmen had smothered him in animal fat and wrapped him in felt to maintain his body temperature. He had lived. Joseph had used animal fat and felt almost exclusively in his artwork ever since.

Beneath him the river winds its way like a black mamba through the Rhineland. This is his eternal home. Joseph snaps his fingers together and the empty Merkur Spiel-Arena is plunged into darkness.

Joseph Heinrich Beuys (12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986)

Join the Football Tourists Society

The Olympiastadion is an iconic stadium. In 1936, it became a symbol of Nazi power when it hosted the Berlin Olympics, opened by Adolf Hitler. Today, the stadium is home to Hertha BSC. In February 2023, we visited Berlin to take in a Bundesliga match and learn some more about the history of the city.

Saturday 11th February

As our plane touches down on the runway the pressure has numbed my hearing. One of my travelling companions is talking to me but all I can hear is a muffled noise coming from his general direction. It’s late-morning and after we disembark, I find the nearest bathroom. It’s not been a long flight but I’ve needed to go since before we took off from London a couple of hours ago.

Today, we have planned a jolly visit to the sinister and forbidding Stasi Museum, the former headquarters of East Germany’s brutal secret police. We head north on the S-Bahn and change at Alexanderplatz for the noisy U-Bahn heading east. Magdalenenstraße is just a few minutes walk away and when we hop off the train we notice a distinct change in the Berlin architecture. Here in the region of Lichtenberg, the apartments are distinctly dour. Medium high-rise blocks of concrete, seven stories tall and cube like, hide in plain sight against the ashen skyline. I imagine that I am a cold-war spy. First I am Harry Palmer, cool, cockney, and very English. Then, I am the more reserved George Smiley on a covert mission to meet Karla.

We cross the busy Frankfurter Allee tentatively, giving ourselves away as tourists I imagine. As we turn right into Ruschestraße, every John le Carré novel that I have ever read, every spy movie that I have ever seen, and every Orwellian nightmare that I have ever imagined is right there, impassioned, unmoved and austere. This is a building that I have visited many times in my mind; though it is somewhere that I have never been.

Standing at the entrance to the Stasi Museum, Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin look upon us disapprovingly, frozen in Bronze as we purchase our tickets and guided tour. This is an archetypal government building of the 1950’s, full of narrow corridors and offices with high windows. Now, seventy years on, there remain just two corridors devoted to exhibitions about the secret police. First, our guide shows us a wall of Stasi Minister photographs. All are of white men and none are less than fifty years old. Erich Mielke, the Minister for State Security from 1957 until the fall of the Berlin Wall is it’s most notorious portrait.

We stay a few hours before making our way to the hotel. The Hauptbahnhof is Berlin’s main train station. It’s about 10 minutes walk from our hotel. The Hotel Berlin Mitte is practical and clean. It’s more like a Premier Inn than The Savoy and that suits our budget just perfectly. We sort ourselves out and head into the city for some dinner and a few beers. Two of the city’s most recognisable landmarks are just a short walk from our hotel.

The Brandenburg gate is arguably one of the most iconic structures in the world. Once, it stood as a gateway to Berlin. Only royalty and gentry were permitted to pass through the central passageway; ordinary citizens had to use the outer passageways. Twelve Doric columns rise to the capped pediment on which The Quadriga was placed by Johann Gottfried Schadow in 1793. The sculpture, depicting a two-wheeled chariot pulled by four horses running side by side, was meant to symbolize peace entering the city. The horses’ reins are held by Victoria, the goddess of victory.

At night the Brandenburg Gate shines with a golden hue. The light catches the sandstone in such a way that the structure looks almost regal. Once the gateway to the city, The Brandenburg Gate came to symbolise the divide between East and West Germany after the wall was built. For fun, we re-enact a prisoner swap under the gate and the moment is captured on one of our group’s spy camera, which looks suspiciously like a modern day mobile.

In contrast to The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag’s contemporary glass dome looks oddly out of place. It shines fluorescent white and we get great images of the dome’s white reflection as we cross the cold and black River Spree. I imagine the last advances of the red army into Berlin as the will of the Nazi’s is finally broken.

We eat currywurst in a restaurant dwarfed by both iconic buildings. One of our number is vegetarian, so he orders a thin pizza with cheese and vegetable topping. I’m not that bowled over by the currywurst; it’s just tomato sauce poured over a sausage with some curry powder sprinkled on top. The beer is much better. Berlinner Pilsner is decent and we neck at least three. The other two in the group wisely order an apple strudel each. I, on the other hand, am keen to try another savoury option. White sausage is not for everyone. I’m not sure what to expect but two white sausages served in a pot of hot brine is not it. There are howls of laughter and derision from the other two as I lift out the two phalluses and place them on my small plate. I eat them both, just to shut the other two up. They are pretty bland and nothing to write home about. The pretzel that they are served with, on the other hand, is lovely. Salty and crispy on the outside; soft and doughy in the centre. I decide there and then to eat more pretzels on this trip.

We haven’t eaten much and the drink is hitting some of the group harder than others. The other two are students of the second world war and the Nazi’s specifically. They are keen to locate Hitler’s Bunker, which is not far from the restaurant. As we stand in the dusty car park, beneath which the Fuhrer took his own life, we all feel a chill. There is an information board but it’s too dark to read it properly. We will be back here on Sunday on our walking tour so we find a bar and settle in for a couple before closing time.

One of the group is chatting to the barmaid when I return from the bathroom and he learns that she is Romanian. ‘She was surprisingly racist’, he tells us later, as we have a nightcap in the hotel bar. It is the eve of the Berlin Elections and the hotel barman (also from Romania) speaks to us of his fears that the Far Right will make further gains. ‘They are very convincing’ he tells us. ‘They make good arguments that people find believable. If they win, I am afraid that I may have to leave. I like it here. This has been my home for ten years.’

Sunday 12th February

After breakfast, we head out to take in some of the sights in the daylight. We catch a bus which takes us to Humbolthain Park, and I am surprised by the amount of graffiti in the city. It is a dry but dreary morning. We stroll through the park like we haven’t a care in the world, following the path past the outdoor lido, which is closed for the winter. Walking towards us is a woman who has her arm outstretched like she is holding on to a lead for an invisible dog. We all laugh when we are out of the woman’s earshot, and like twelve year-old kids, we get hours of amusement out of what we have just seen.

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Two concrete turrets rise up out of the hillside beside us. This is what remains of a flak tower that was once used to shoot down allied bombers in the war. Originally there were four turrets, each with four anti-aircraft guns. Each turret had a 360 degree range of fire. In places the concrete must have been nearly two metres thick, making this a remarkably strong structure indeed.

We climb the steps up the hill to the top of the flak tower and look out across Berlin. The view is quite breath-taking and it’s immediately obvious why they built this defence here. The gunners would have had a perfect line of sight to see enemy planes approaching.

Although we are in good heart, there is little to enjoy about this place. There are empty cans and broken glass bottles of beer strewn around. It’s clear that the towers are not well looked after and that every effort is being made to hide them out of sight. The interior of the towers are sealed off from the public and when I return home and research the towers, I understand why. Toward the end of the war, when Berlin was under siege, the towers were used as a bunker for thousands of people. With little in the way of sanitation and rations, many died of illness or committed suicide.

After coffee and a cake, we make our way to the Olympiastadion by U-Bahn. As we head further West, more blue and white scarves and hats begin to fill up the train. Behind us, in another carriage, we can hear some buskers singing “Oh when the saints go marching in” but nobody is joining in or taking much notice of them. Most fans have a bottle of beer in their hand or a crate of Berlinner slung over their shoulder.

The station at Olympiastadion has many platforms, all leading to a bridge across to the stadium. Just outside the exit to the station is a bar with some tables and wooden benches. The sun is out, so we stop and order ourselves a bottle of Berlinner Kindl each. We watch the Hertha fans streaming in from the station, all decked in the blue and white Hertha colours. A few are waving flags and most have Hertha scarves. We buy some scarves for ourselves at a merchandise stall.

The atmosphere outside the stadium is lively but completely safe. There are trolleys and buckets for empty bottles and glasses. If this were in England, bottles would probably be flying everywhere. I order the food: bratwurst and chips for me, and we have a couple more Berlinners before we head over to the stadium.

It’s about 20 minutes before kick-off and we are right outside the ground. Built in 1936 by Werner March, ready for the Berlin Olympics, the Olympiastadion had a capacity of over 100,000 people. Now, having been refurbished, the capacity is 74,475 seated, making it the third largest in Germany. The stadium is recessed 12 metres into the ground, so from outside it doesn’t look as big as it does from inside. There are some similarities between the Olympiastadion and the Coliseum in Rome. It’s symmetry, Doric columns, and stone structure hint at Roman inspiration for it’s design. Perhaps, this is not surprising, given its use by the Nazis for propaganda purposes and their ambition for empire building.

We take a couple of selfies and buy massive pretzels to take in with us. These will soak up the ‘Berlinner’ nicely. The Ostkurve is the place to be and we are in the upper section. At the front of the lower tier, three fans are on a platform. One of them is banging a drum whilst the other two take it in turns to rally the crowd into singing. The flags are waving and the Ostkurve is a sea of blue and white. Unlike in England, you can drink a pint in your seat. We don’t hesitate. Juggling our beer and oversized pretzels, we join in the fun.

As the players come out, the Hertha anthem ‘nur nach hause’ plays and as one the Hertha fans hold their scarves stretched out above their heads. The song is a rip-off of the Rod Stewart song, ‘We are Sailing’ and is sung with great emotion in the Ostkurve. I understand that the sentiment behind the song is that this is Hertha’s home and that the fans will never leave.

As the game kicks-off there is a chant that once I’ve heard it, like the Kylie song, I can’t get it out of my head. Hier kommt Hertha, Ihr scheisst Euch in die Hose, Wir stehen ganz oben, Und wir steigen wieder auf… Loosely translated – Here is Hertha, Shit in your pants, We are always on top, We will go back up…

Borussia Monchengladbach (Gladbach) are quickly on top and I fear that Hertha will be well beaten today. After 17 minutes, Nico Elvedi heads in unmarked from a Luca Netz corner and the visitors are in front. To be fair, they have brought a few thousand travelling fans with them. This is a good turnout considering the Sunday afternoon kick-off and that it’s a 600km journey.

Gladbach continue to dominate possession and it’s against the run of play when Jessic Ngankam tucks away Marco Richter’s square ball across the face of the goal to take Hertha up the Olympiastadion escalator level at the break. We head out on to the balcony at half-time and order a beer from one of the mobile vendors whose carting litres of Berlinner around in a bag on his back. I’ve collected four plastic glasses for my little bar back home as each one marks a different moment in the club’s history.

Hertha start the second half much more brightly. They are closing down much higher up the pitch and their press pays off when the ball reaches Marton Dardai who smashes a rocket in off the underside of the crossbar from 25 yards. Not a bad 21st birthday present for the lad, with his father Pal – himself a former Hertha coach and the club’s record appearance maker in the Bundesliga – watching on in delight from the stands.

Hertha make sure of their first points of 2023 when substitute Derry Scherhant finishes smartly, in stoppage time, before Dodi Lukebakio adds further gloss with a penalty in the 97th minute. The victory sees Hertha climb out of the bottom two at the expense of VfB Stuttgart.

Dusk is upon us as we leave the stadium. The Olympiastadion is an absolute spectacle with it’s roof lit up blue. We walk around the outside of the stadium deciding to avoid the rush to the trains. I take half a dozen photos from above the marathon steps and the image looks futuristic despite the historical significance of the venue. We attempt to see as much as we can and read the plaques around the perimeter but its getting too dark. We agree that we should have booked a stadium tour. Maybe that’s something we can do on a return visit?

We jump off the train at Friedrichstraße and cross the bridge to an Irish pub. The instant I order a beer, a couple of English guys recognise our accent. They have been to the match too. Calling me over, he asks where I am from. When I tell him that I am from Southampton, he tells me that he was born there as well. We have a good chat, reminiscing about the city and talking about the people that we both know and have known. The man that he is travelling with tells us about his job as a television extra. Both my mates are awe-struck when he tells them that he has played a Nazi officer in the National Geographic’s history programme, ‘Nazi Megastructures’. I am equally impressed when I discover that he was the club chairman in an episode of ‘Ted Lasso’. We drink a couple of beers with these two and then head out into the city to find something to eat.

After a very mediocre curry, we head back to the hotel and a nightcap at the hotel bar. With just one more day in Berlin, the trip that we had been looking forward to and planning for so long is almost over.

Monday 13th February

The walking tour is four hours long and brings the history of the city to life. We visit The Reichstag, The Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler’s Bunker, The Brandenburg Gate, The Jewish Memorial, The Russian Monument, The Palace of Tears, and a chocolate shop! Our guide is a good laugh and we learn plenty about the Third Reich.

Before we head back to the airport, we spend a couple of hours in the Topography of Terror museum. We all find this really interesting but there isn’t enough time to study all of the information boards before we have to leave.

As our plane leaves the runway and reaches up into the night sky above Berlin, I know inside that I will be back soon.

With a few days free in the diary, in the fortnight leading up to Christmas, what else was there to do on a Sunday morning but jump on a coach to France and take in a Ligue 1 match?

I’d identified Lille as a ground that I wanted to visit a while back. So, when the fixture list threw up a Sunday evening match between LOSC Lille and Qatar giants, PSG 😉, how could I resist?

Sunday, 10th December, 2023

Rather than travel just as a fan next week, I’ve decided to put my france media credentials to work and get accredited. Last week, I’d been to Brighton for the Europa League match with Marseille, so I had the bug again.

My application is approved on Thursday, which is handy because I’ve already booked the coach tickets for Sunday! I didn’t want to miss out on a good price, and £29.99 from London to Lille was not to be sniffed at.

Sunday, 17th December, 5.20am

As always, I do my research on the first leg of the journey (en route, as the french say). It’s an early start, bloody early to be fair, and I’m grateful for a lift from my lovely wife to the coach station in Fareham.

Lille, I learn, is a merger of two teams, Olympique Lillois and SC Fives in 1944. Both clubs were founding members of the French Division 1 and Olympique Lillois was the league’s inaugural champions in 1932-1933 when the league was called the National. Following a scandal which saw Antibes disqualified for ‘suspicion of bribery’, Olympique Lillois defeated Cannes 4-3 to take the title. The following year, the league was renamed Division 1 and FC Sète completed the league and cup double.

During World War II, the Vichy regime outlawed professionalism in sport, but football in France continued under an amateur code.

When professional football returned in 1945, following the liberation of France by the allies, two of the founder members Olympique Lillois and SC Fives merged to create a new club and Lille were formed, promptly winning the title in 1945-1946.

I daydream a while on the coach. It’s 1981, and I’m on the set of the wartime football film, Escape to Victory.

Ardiles is showing off his skills in front of the rolling camera. The ball is behind him when he flicks it up effortlessly over his own head and also over the head of the befuddled, onrushing opponent. Ardiles continues his run forward, and the heavy leather ball falls perfectly into his stride on the dusty gravel pitch.

Meanwhile, Stallone is between the posts parrying, saving, and diving on the dust. He’s doing everything that he can to stop each shot. He’s gotta be on the team.

Michael Caine shouts something at Pele for not passing the ball, but it sounds like he’s shouting, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” (from the Italian Job) and it’s at this point that I realise I’ve dozed off. “Cut!” I yell in my sleep. Thankfully, I’ve not shouted this out loud and there’s no harm done. I look out of the window and see the brick spire of the cathedral in Guildford.

Arriving ahead of schedule at London Victoria, I grab a coffee – to go – and find my Flixbus coach connection waiting at platform 13.

Once on board, I settle in. The coach driver tells us that the toilet is broken. A sign on it says so. ‘Toilet out of order, it don’t werk!’ He elaborates, “while we are moving, you can do number 1. Only pee-pee.” There are grumbles amid the sniggers.

An hour or so later, the double-decker, lime green, Flixbus coach fits snugly onto le shuttle, and I admire the skill of the driver. I feel like I’m one of the sour cream and onion crisps enclosed tightly inside my tube of travel Pringles!

Lille is not very far from the shuttle terminus on the French side. After ten minutes, I see a road sign, which gives the distance as 82km to Lille. The A15 snakes through North Eastern France.

This is the Western Front. This is Ypres, the scene of 250,000 allied nightmares. The highway is flanked on either side by wet and muddy fields. ‘Ypres 2000m, another sign says,’ and it gets me thinking about my school history lessons and Blackadder Four.

In Lille, it’s just a short hop on the Metro, and I’m outside the stadium by 3.30pm. Only five hours and fifteen minutes early.

Lille has played its home matches since 2012 here at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, which is also known as the Decathlon Arena (sponsors name). The 50,186-capacity stadium is the fourth-largest football stadium in France and has a retractable roof. It is named after the former prime minister of France.

Pierre Mauroy was a socialist, prime minister between 1981 to 1984 under President François Mitterrand. Mauroy also served as Mayor of Lille from 1973 to 2001. At the time of his death Mauroy was the emeritus mayor of the city of Lille. He died from complications of lung cancer on 7 June 2013 at the age of 84.

I’m here way too early to collect my media pass, so I take a stroll around the perimeter and find a bar to stand inside and have a pint. I’m a couple of pints in when I realise the time and make my way around the stadium to collect my pass.

Once inside, I take the lift up to the press area and set myself up on the halfway line. Then, I head back inside for some dinner. Some dauphinoise potatoes that taste like a carbonara, and some salad.

The experience of a match in France seems to be all about the ultras. Things have got a bit out of hand lately, and away fans have been banned at many grounds in ligue 1. Nevertheless, Paris St Germain (PSG) have brought about 1000 away fans, and they’re parked up in the top corner of the ground at the other end of the stadium from the ‘Dogues Virage Est’ where the Lille ultras are packed in.

Before kick-off, the stand to my left is hidden below an enormous flag depicting the skeleton head of a mastiff (dog) smoking a spliff! The end of it is lit up by a flare for effect.

If you can’t get excited about seeing arguably the best player in the world in the flesh, then you can’t really call yourself a football fan, can you? Kylian Mbappe is that player. The television doesn’t really do him justice.

Sunday, 17th December, Pierre Mouroy Stadium,
LOSC Lille 1, Paris Saint-Germain 1

It’s only six minutes into the game and Mbappe is terrorising the Lille defence with a mix of skill, pace, power, and raw determination. He is an irresistible force, although this would turn out to be one of his quieter games.

The 4-2-3-1 formation of the home side looks a little stretched in the first half. Kangin Lee looks to have acres of space in the midfield to operate alongside Zaire-Emery, and between them and Vitinha, they create plenty.

Lille are finding it difficult to get out of their own half, and on 10 minutes, Dembele finds an ocean of space out on the right side of the pitch. Ultimately though, his cross is aimless. Even Mbappe can’t turn that kind of service into anything meaningful. The same happens again two minutes later, and I smile knowingly to myself. I’m not a huge fan of Dembele.

A couple of minutes later and PSG are almost made to pay for their wastefulness in attack. Edon Zhegrova has two chances to open the scoring in quick succession. Cutting in from the right-hand side, the 24-year-old Kosovan fires first into the side netting and then wide of the far post.

Adilson Gomes livens up the crowd in the 17th minute when he nutmegs a PSG midfielder before being hauled down. He does the same in the second half before attempting a direct pass that doesn’t quite find its target.

Lille’s build up play is careless and Lee intercepts a wayward pass before marauding forward down the middle and feeding Dembele out on the right. However, Dembele’s right footed shot is pulled past Chevalier’s right-hand post, much to the relief of the home crowd.

This is turning into a rather scrappy affair and it’s no surprise that Pereira in the heart of the PSG defence is beginning to control the tempo of the game. PSG’s midfield are beginning to dominate now. Through the middle, they are overrunning Bentaleb and Andre, Lille’s double pivot.

Mbappe is denied a shooting opportunity on 30 minutes when he inadvertently stands on the ball after PSG break quickly from a Lille corner.

Vitinha draws a fine save out of Chevalier in the Lille goal as PSG turn up the heat approaching half-time, forcing a succession of corners.

The second half is scrappier than the first. Lille have tightened up the middle, and PSG are losing their shape.

It’s not a great surprise when the deadline is broken by a penalty. I couldn’t see either team scoring up until then. Mbappe places the ball on the spot and dispatches his shot wide and high to Cheavalier’s right and past his despairing dive.

PSG are content with this. They’ll just defend now and see this game out. The Lille fans try to get the team going. Flares and smoke create a wall of red amid their chanting.

Zhegrova is not having much luck on the right side of Lille’s attack. He’s been making the wrong choices at times and wasting good positions.

Time is just about to run out for Lille. We’ve played the 90, + 4 minutes of the 5 allocated minutes of additional time. Lille’s substitute Jonathon David makes an absolute meal of a chance before the ball somehow finds itself at his feet again, and he smashes it home.

Half the press box are on their feet, showing their true colours. The stadium rises as one, and I’m half expecting the World Cup to be presented on the field as everyone goes wild!

The restart is accompanied by the final whistle. I take a couple more photos and head down for the post-match press conference with each of the teams’ coaches.

Luckily, there’s a translator to translate the questions from the floor…from French into Spanish…and the coaches responses back into French again. I make a mental note to take a crash course in French and then take a couple of snaps: headshots of each coach for the blog.

The coach journey home is hard work. I’m tired, and passport control at Calais is unnecessarily slow. We have to get off the coach twice before enduring an hour-long wait to board the shuttle.

I’ve a couple of hours at Victoria, so I find somewhere to sit, eat, and edit this post.

I’ve not slept much on the way home, so I’ll try and get my head down now. Before I do, though, a couple of final paragraphs.

I’m not sure that I found football’s heart and soul on this trip. The ultras scene just seems a little contrived for my liking and the football lacked some of the intensity that you associate with the English leagues.

As for Lille itself, I didn’t really get a chance to look around the city. I’ll make the trip again soon, I’m sure. It’s a relatively short and uncomplicated journey, and the stadium is quite spectacular.

My heart feels pity for the soldiers on both sides of the Western front. An absent romantic border. A bloody and muddy field. And Christmas, two weeks away. I order my coffee. Make it a milky one Baldrick!

A plump spectre stoops uneasily as he prepares to ascend into the incandescent white light, high above the chanting crowd. His dark suit is tighter than he remembers as he squints through tiny, clouded, circular glasses at all that he has assembled.

His moustache, once black and bush-like, is now grey and fading. His hair, once dark and wild, is now receding – yet neatly coiffed. His mind, once sharp, is blunt, bereft of ideas; stale. Eighty-three years old, childless, and alone, Gerard Leonard Frederik Philips checks his pocket-watch and drifts into The light.

We’ve been planning our latest football trip for a couple of months, and now it is already upon us. It is an ambitious schedule. 3 matches, in 3 countries, in 3 days!

We’ve arrived in Dover ‘well-early’ after leaving my house at 6.15 for a midday ferry crossing. Darren is driving, and I’m grateful for that. He has a smart BMW, and I mess around a lot with the heated seats on the way, as we listen to the 90s football podcast.

We’re grateful when we’re told we can board an earlier ferry at the check-in booth, and we are soon on our merry way across the channel. I’ve brought croissants and Haribo jelly babies for the crossing to Dunkirk, so we save money on buying breakfast on the ship. It goes in the fruit machine instead; we don’t win.

We spend about fifteen minutes looking for a door out onto the deck of the ship and discover it isn’t really worth it. It’s cold and a bit shit really. There’s no sign of Kate Winslet anywhere or a swimming pool. While we are on the ferry, I get a call from my youngest daughter to tell me that she has passed her driving test at the first time of asking. She starts off by telling me that she’s failed but she’s fooling nobody. I’m over the moon for her and it’s a great way to start our trip¹.

Darren missed his vocation in life; he should have been a travel planner, not a Schools Programme Delivery Manager at the Ordnance Survey. He’s got this trip planned out meticulously. If I was wearing a hat, I’d take it off to him.

Our first match is in Eindhoven tonight, where high flying PSV take on Heracles under the floodlights. It’s been a busy few weeks, so the research is a bit last minute. In the car, we search up Skiete Willy. He’s the little fella on some of the merch that we’ve seen, and we’re keen to find out more about him.

We’ve splashed out on a Holiday Inn and it’s only a stone’s throw from the ground. Darren’s driven a long way today and it’s good to get into the room and chill for a little while. However, it’s not long before we are heading to the stadium to raid the club store.

Walking in Eindhoven, there are two things that you need to be careful of. The first is that the cars come from the opposite direction when you are crossing the street. The second is a lot more dangerous. Bicycles. They are everywhere and they stop for nobody. We take our chances with the cyclists and have a couple of near misses before arriving, still in one piece, at the store.

In the store, Darren tries hard to convince me to buy some PSV Eindhoven pyjamas. They only have them in kids sizes so I pretend to try them on for size for a laugh. I buy a bobble hat, a pin and a t-shirt. Darren buys a T-shirt and some other bits. We’ve got some vouchers for the shop with our match tickets so it’s a no-brainer to make sure that we spend it all. We take our stuff back to the hotel before making our way back to the ground for the pre-match drinks.

Outside the stadium, an hour before kick-off, there is a DJ on a stage in a dimly lit marquee playing Europop and football tunes. We’re a little surprised when he slaps on Sweet Caroline, widely accepted as the recently adopted anthem of English football. Some of the Dutch fans sing along under the red tinted stage lights, and we’re both getting in the mood now.

The beer is a bit pricey right next to the ground, so we head across the busy ring-road to some pop-up bars and get ourselves a couple of amber beverages and a hot dog each. There’s more atmosphere over here, and it’s all good-natured. The plastic cups they serve the beer in have pictures of a PSV player on each of them. It’s a lottery which one you get. It’s like opening a sealed packet of panini stickers (match attax cards for the younger readers), and I’ve definitely got the better squad.

The Philips Stadion is a 4-star rated stadium according to UEFA and has a capacity of 36,500. Established as the Philips Sportpark, it was constructed as a sports field for Philips employees in 1910. The Philips Elftal played football matches from 1911 until 1913, when the team was succeeded by PSV. Since 1913, PSV has used the original ground as its home stadium.

In the 1970’s and later in the 1990’s, the stadium was covered and extended up to boast two tiers. The four corners were completed in 2002, expanding the capacity to it’s current level. The North East and South East corners are distinctively futuristic when viewed from the outside but honestly, they are not in keeping with the rest of the stadium and look a bit odd.

Once inside we are treated to an incredible light show ahead of the match. We’ve got brilliant tickets fairly close to the halfway line and its perfect for watching the action.

Gerard Philips looks down with glazed eyes. He is not easily impressed, yet he smiles at the way the lights dance to the music across his field of electronic dreams. He weeps openly as the golden generations are relived on the big screen. The 1978 UEFA Cup is won and held aloft. The 1988 European Cup final is replayed as Van Breukelen saves Benfica’s sixth penalty. Philips. This is his club. His company. His city. He will stay a while, perhaps for eternity.

Once the match gets underway, PSV dominate. When Bryan Limbombe is given his marching orders after 13 minutes for a dangerous tackle, Heracles retreat to the edge of their own box and it’s only a handful of minutes before PSV open the scoring. Luuk de Jong glances in from a deft Joey Veerman free kick and the game is effectively over there and then.

Only some miraculous goalkeeping prevents PSV from racking up double figures. Michael Brouwer makes 11 saves in the Heracles goal and at least half of them are world class.

On 72 minutes, Heracles almost haul themselves back into it when substitute Mario Engels skips through the PSV defence before hitting the far post from a narrow angle.

A couple of wonder saves later and the match is over.

We head into the city for a bit of a stroll and we’re on the hunt for food. I weigh up the merits of a kebab over a McDonalds meal but common sense prevails. A kebab this early on in the trip would no doubt play havoc with me for another day or two so we opt for the golden arches.

I avoid the McKroket which is McDonald’s take on the broodje kroket, which consists of a slice of deep-fried, breaded cheese and meat patty between two pieces of bread. The McDonald’s version has something like beef ragout inside and is served plain on a McDonald’s bun with mustard sauce.

We watch some stand-up on YouTube as we fall asleep. Tomorrow we will cross two borders and journey south into France.

Little Gerard is afraid of the darkness. One day, he thinks to himself. One day, I will light up the night sky with my dreams.

Footnotes

1. The fundamental difference between a trip and holiday is defined thus: A trip places zero expectation on the traveller to buy gifts for their family. However, a holiday places an absolute requirement on the traveller to find something cheap and tacky (although it may appear expensive and culturally refined) to hand over as a peace offering upon their return. ↩︎

I’ve left Darren asleep in the room and gone down for breakfast early. There’s no rush to get going today, but I’m a morning person, and the breakfast is paid for. I’m on my second coffee before Darren emerges like an extra out of Shaun of the Dead. He’s less of a morning person.

After breakfast, I dust off the camera, and we head into the city for a proper look around. It’s a grey morning, and there’s a dampness in the air.

The city stirs slowly, shaking off the Friday night hangover.

The entrance to the tube station breaks the earth’s surface like the mouth of a metropolitan sperm whale, and a few early risers are swallowed whole, descending deep underground into the belly of the urban beast.

The railway line dissects the city, and we cross one of the main roads and head to the main station.

Modernist architect Koen van der Gaast’s first major train station design was Eindhoven Centraal. The city had been badly bombed in 1944, and the station rebuild was part of an overall design for the reconstruction of the city.

The frontal view of the station with its large glass façade and slightly curved roof make many people think of a Philips radio. Built on a wide mezzanine behind the façade, the restaurant overlooks the city.¹

We revisit the stadium again for a photo shoot before strolling back to the hotel to check out.

Heading South West from Eindhoven, we bypass Antwerp and Ghent. Ghent’s ground looks quality, and we add it to the list for future trips.

I’m busy on my phone making a Canva video from Eindhoven. It’s taking me ages to download the photos from my camera to my phone, and I give up when we get to the next service station.

Darren gets a pastry while I tuck into a spicy meat sandwich, which proceeds to repeat on me all the way to Lille and into the early afternoon.

Our hotel in Lille is right next to the stadium, and it’s just starting to rain as we pull into the poorly signposted carpark. Darren claims the double bed and I am left with the single in the corner. “I booked it and I drove,” is his argument. I have no come back for this of course and, after all, a warm bed in the corner is all I need. This place isn’t the Ritz but it’ll do for tonight.

I’ve left my phone charger in the socket back in Eindhoven, so I’m low on battery by the time we are ready to head out for the match.

The hotel ‘concierge’ is a top bloke and he offers to charge my phone for me while we have a pre-match ‘pression’ (well, I can’t very well keep writing beer, can I?!).

We pass some lively away fans who have driven down from Le Havre. They are doing well this season, having been promoted at the end of last, and look like they might just stay up.

We cross the bridge that leads us to the ground, and Darren is impressed. After a lap of the ground, we find a bar, and we’re back on it. It’s a busy bar, and Lille fans are spilling out onto the concourse. We stay inside having a chat and watching the English football on the big screen. Pelican is the beer of choice. It’s a little unusual with a vanilla and citrus after taste. It’s enjoyable for a couple of pints but no more than that.

Le Havre fans are vocal inside the ground, but it’s not long until the home side is on top.

After 14 minutes, David taps in at the far post after Lille work a training ground free-kick. Then, just before half-time, David latches on to a deftly weighted through ball before adding his own neatly chipped finish.

If you’re thinking of having a pint inside the ground, don’t bother. It’s watery and tastes like piss…if piss was watered down.²

The second half is more of the same, and when David adds his third, the LOSC fans get to practice their chant hosted by the stadium announcer. It goes something like this,

Stadium announcer: Jonathan…

Crowd: David!

Stadium announcer: (Slightly louder) Jonathan…

Crowd: David!

Stadium announcer: (Shouting) Jonathan…

Crowd: David!

For a laugh we join in. Then we do so again when David is rested near the end.

After the match we visit the club store, where I buy another hat and club pin. I also find an extendable mobile phone charger and add it to the shopping basket.

We toy with heading into the city on the metro but decide to eat by the ground instead. We’ve found an all you can eat/ cook your own pizza restaurant, and unsurprisingly, it’s packed. We’re lucky to get seats, and with the big screens showing the Manchester City match on both walls, it’s ideal.

Our eyes are way too big for our bellies, and we only manage a couple of trips to the food bar and a couple of beers before calling it a night.

Tomorrow, we are off to Belgium for our third match in three days, in the third country.

Footnotes

1. Artist Lex Horn (1916-1968) made the decorated windows for the Eindhoven station. Depicting Dutch economic activities like shipping, cattle breeding, and dike construction. The massive artwork above the underpass resembles a thirty-panel cartoon. In addition, Horn made three small round windows in which migratory birds are showcased as a representation of the desire to explore. ↩︎

2. I’ve never tasted piss. Honestly. ↩︎

Willem kneels on the lush Flanders grassland, his pike resting on the turf and his goedendag at 45 degrees to the ground. It is hot, even for July. These Flemish fields are his; today, the French will not have them. Around him, 9,400 Flanders men in chainmail armour shimmer like a mirror ball in the sunshine.

Directly behind Willem, the second row of pike men stand with their weapons readied by their side. Some have determined, battle-hardened looks on their faces, while others are pale. Thirty yards further back are the crossbowmen, spearmen, and the light infantry. All are silent. All are waiting.

Within minutes the scene is a flood of bloody nightmares. The French volleys of arrows succeed only in forcing the Flemish back but make little impact on their front line. The French knights and men-at-arms charge at a light trot with their lances ready, but the pikemen do not flinch. Amid rousing trumpets, French Commander Robert of Artois joins the battle personally and routs Flemish troops under Guy of Namur. But, the entire Flemish formation does not yield.

Willem lets out a guttural roar as a heavy French cavalier is brought down under his steel spiked goedendag. Poleaxed and defenceless, Commander Robert of Artois pleads for his life. Willem pauses, pike raised and poised to strike like a venomous serpent. “Sorry, I don’t speak French,” he snears as the bloodied spike drops, tearing through the flesh of the Frenchman’s torso.

One day, they will name this The Battle of the Golden Spurs, after the 500 pairs of spurs that have been captured in the battle and offered to the nearby Church of Our Lady. Today, the French have fallen before weavers, fullers, and the common folk of Flanders.

Willem van Saeftinghe rises. The lush Flanders grassland is shaven now and painted with pike-straight white lines. Around him, on all four sides, small grandstands rise up like a miniature Roman colosseum, empty and noiseless. Above him, the leaden sky is dark, and the February air is cold and damp. The malicious wind rips, slaps, and claws at his face. This is not a day to do battle in Courtrais.

I’m up before Darren again and heading down for a coffee and a continental breakfast. It’s Sunday morning, and today, we’re off to Belgium for our third match in three days, in our third country.

For this leg, we’ve taken advantage of media accreditation, and I’m keen to treat Darren to the comfort and hospitality of a top-flight football media suite. We’ve turned down the Bruges Derby and opted instead for a top against second-bottom clash at tiny KV Kortijk, or Courtrais, as it is pronounced in English.

After leaving the motel, we head for a hypermarket to buy wine and gifts to take back to England with us. I top up with red wine and a handful of French bars of chocolate for the girls at home.

Lille and Kortrijk are only 31.4KM apart which makes it an ideal trip for our last match of the weekend. With kick-off not until 3pm, we have loads of time to kill before the match and we spend most of that time looking for a petrol station.

After arriving In Kortrijk, we head to the stadium, and we are directed to park in a sodden field on the opposite side of the road to the ground. We gather our media equipment and head up a short road past the tented bars and food stalls to find the press room.

We are directed to the top floor of a small temporary building just behind Tribune 2 (Stand 2) of the Guldensporen Stadion whereupon we find an empty row of desks and chairs. It’s basic, but homely, and we have a television with the Bruges match on so we settle in.

As the press room fills up slowly we chat to a Jupiler League television commentator who describes himself as the Belgian ‘John Motson.’ I don’t bother to point out that he’s much younger, alive, and not wearing a sheepskin coat! He’s a top lad though and explains as best as he can how the end of season works in Belgium. We write an article about it, which you can find here.

After the press from Kortijk’s opponents, Royale Union St Gilloise (Union SG), arrive, we are served sandwiches and hot drinks. We each have a coffee which is delivered to our desk while we work.

With about 40 minutes to go before kick off, we make our way around to the press seats which are poorly positioned in the far end of the main stand. I get my camera out and go pitch side to get some first-half shots while Darren watches the opening exchanges from his seat.

As the teams walk out on to the pitch the dulcet tones of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” blares out over the stadium PA and all in the home end hold their flags aloft and sing as one. Darren, a life-long Liverpool fan, looks on in disbelief. Get your own bloody song, is written all across his face! I start to singalong quietly just to piss him off. I don’t think he notices.

Union SG are clearly the better side and have the best of the opening exchanges, registering two shots on target within 3 minutes of the start. After 7 minutes Union SG are ahead. Mathias Rasmussen finds acres of room at the far post to head in a Dennis Eckert cross after a patient build up. If Kortrijk are unable to get a foothold in this game, this could be a rout.

Alessio Castro-Montes doubles Union’s lead after just 17 minutes with a delightfully placed left footed shot from the right side, just inside the box, finding the top left corner.

The rest of the first half is a non-event as Union take their foot off the gas but keep Kortrijk at arms length.

Only Cardiff loanee, Isaak Davies is really making any impression for the home side. I take a shot of him as he attempts to escape the attention of 3 Union defenders. He is making a nuisance of himself; he’s a livewire in attack.

Half-time comes and goes, and it’s more of the same at the start of the second half.

Just to make sure that we are in Dunkirk in plenty of time to catch our ferry, we leave the game with 10 minutes still remaining. Although Davies pulls a goal back for the home side as we are about to leave, there is no chance that Kortrijk will get anything more out of this game.

The drive back to the ferry is uneventful, apart from seeing a car that has unintentionally left the road, flown over a ditch, and landed facing the wrong way on a train line! It looks like everybody has got out okay as the driver and passengers are all standing beside the road, well out of the way. We are past the bizarre scene before we can fully take it in.

We are plenty early enough for the ferry, and both of us are tired. We tuck into a curry when we are on board, which is really tasty. I have mine with chips and a naan bread.

We reflect on our achievements. That’s 3 games, in 3 countries, in 3 days. Easy. Perhaps next time we will try for 4!

Epilogue

Willem van Saeftinghe smiles, sighs, and looks to the heavens. It is May, and the sun is hot on his face as he stands unnoticed in the technical area of the home side.

It is the last game of the season: the play-off match to decide if Kortrijk will play in the JPL next season or be relegated. The game is poised at 1-1 after 90 minutes of the second leg, and the referee has just blown his whistle to send the tie into extra time.

Icelandic manager Freyr Alexandersson brings on fresh legs, and silently Willem approves of the tactic. Thierry Ambrose enters the fray.

Ambrose is a former Man City youth player. After leaving the Under-23s, he has mostly been out on loan in France. In August, he arrived in Kortijk for an undisclosed fee and has hardly played after rupturing his achilles tendon.

Thirty minutes later, the battle is won. Ambrose has scored 3 times. Kortijk have scored 4 in total. When the whistle brings the match to an end, Kortrijk are 4-2 winners (5-2 on aggregate), and the celebrations begin in earnest.

The Lommel SK players fall to the ground, prostrate, and are inconsolable in defeat. Willem smiles to himself as a distant memory is evoked.

The half-built Neues Schloss (new palace) rises like a stone monolith in the distance as the poet feathers the parchment gracefully. His words, an Ode to Joy, sting and arouse in equal measure as they charge relentlessly through his grappling consciousness and are either forsaken or legitimized as today’s truth. This is Friedrich’s calling. He is a miner toiling at the coalface of authenticity; a choirboy climbing the octave’s jagged peak; an eagle’s beak piercing the sky like Icarus in full flight. On earth, he stands and reads aloud, “O friends, not these tones!”

Friedrich Schiller passes noiselessly between the tartan-clad herd. They are joyous. Tonight they are brothers, singing loudly; drunken with fire. Friedrich soaks up the passion while the earth soaks up the ejected spittle of 10,000 Scotsmen as they threaten to rise up and send Edward homeward ‘tae think again. Tomorrow he will follow this blue and white army into battle. Man, he ponders, is only human when at play.

Gatwick is busy this morning and I’m tucking into a full English while ‘people-watching’. I’ve gotten through security early, just to make sure there are no problems getting the cameras on board. That is the single thing about the trip that I have been worried about the most. I’ve been bought a new flight case, for my photography gear, as an early birthday present from my wife and this is the first time I’ve used it abroad.

I’m flying into Zurich today, then heading North into Germany for Scotland’s final group match against Hungary in Stuttgart. After a fine draw with Switzerland in their second match, Scotland have their destiny, qualification into the last-16, in their own hands. Hungary, on the other hand, can only qualify with a win and if results in the other groups go their way. Suitably refuelled, I make my way to the gate. The plane, I am told, is on time.

It’s a short flight, and my eyes have barely closed when we are dumped unceremoniously on the tarmac at Zurich airport, and I am rudely awakened. I take a short train ride into Zurich’s main station and climb the concrete stairs to the middle level, where I find my connection on an understated information board. So, an hour earlier than anticipated, I am on my way to Germany. The heavens open outside, and the wrath of Thor is discharged across the Swiss landscape. I am grateful to be inside.

It’s three and a half hours later; I have arrived in Stuttgart. It’s still raining steadily as I take a series of trains to Neckarpark which is the closest S-Bahn station to the ground. I have to go to the Media Accreditation Centre to collect my tournament pass, without which I will not be admitted into the stadium tomorrow. By the time I reach the accreditation centre, I have walked the best part of three miles! With the road outside the stadium blocked half-way down, security have sent me all the way back around the stadium, towing my camera gear and carrying a heavy rucksack on my back.

The accreditation centre is German efficiency and bureaucracy personified. I am made to wait in a queue of one (just me) before being called forward to present my passport. Then my accreditation is checked and my photo taken before a third person delivers my tournament pass. I am relieved to finally have the lanyard around my neck and the officials in the accreditation centre give me some sound advice about how best to get to my hotel. I look and feel like Roddy from the kids movie, Flushed Away. I can’t wait to get dry.

The hotel is in Ludwigsburg, which is about 10 minutes north of Stuttgart by train. When I arrive there, I am tired and I decide to have a lie down for 30 minutes. Georgia and Czechia are busy playing out a 1-1 draw in Hamburg on the television as I close my eyes and drop off to sleep. By the time I wake up, it’s Portugal and Turkey on my screen and I realise I’ve been asleep for a couple of hours!

Schlossplatz in Stuttgart is home to one of the big fan zones and it is here that I head to for the evening. As I’m making my way there, Turkish fans are heading out in their droves. They’ve just been humbled 3-0 by Portugal and with so many Turks living in the city, I assume that they’re heading home to drown their sorrows.

On the main high street, a few drunk Scots are singing along with an organ grinder who is playing ‘Flower of Scotland’ on his tricycle! It’s a bizarre scene but a joyful one and I smile as I stroll past.

Schlossplatz has a long history tied to various periods of construction and renovation. The square itself was first laid out in 1807, as part of King Friedrich I’s plans to create a more open and accessible public space in front of the New Palace (Neues Schloss). The New Palace, which dominates Schlossplatz, was constructed between 1746 and 1807, serving as the primary royal residence.

The ‘Jocks’ have gathered on the steps just outside of the fan zone and they are making a shit-load of noise. I take a few snaps of them and once they notice the camera they are all about me wanting their photos taken. I snap a few more, just to humour them, before heading into the media centre which is just inside the palace. There are a few snacks and drinks in the media centre and I make myself at home as the Belgium and Romania match gets underway. It’s a little quieter now but there is a decent gathering of Romania fans and I make sure that I get a few photos.

At half-time, I leave the camera inside the media centre and get myself my first beer of the trip and a bratwurst. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten anything and I devour the food. I watch the second half from the balcony which offers a slightly elevated view of the park although it’s got a little too dark to take any more photos. Memories of 2006 flood my brain. That was the last time I was here in Stuttgart. That was a very different trip. We were the kings of Elysium, carried aloft on the shoulders of Vodka and Red-Bull. I was in my early thirties then. De-Bruyne’s goal for Belgium on 80 minutes snaps me out of my dreamlike state and I decide to head back to the hotel for a relatively early night. I’ve got a big day tomorrow.

Learning from the previous day, I leave myself plenty of time to get to the stadium ahead of the match. It’s about midday, and the platform in Ludwigsburg is already heaving with tartan and kilts. There is a frantic scurry as forty-or-so scots realise, at the last minute, that they are on the wrong platform as the train pulls in. They all make it aboard comfortably enough, and I get chatting to a few of them as we head into the city. Most of them haven’t got tickets and are just ‘here to party’. I’m offered a can of German lager by a kilt-adorned Scotsman who tells me that his name is also Paul. I take it, and we toast the Scottish.

When I arrive at the stadium, it is almost four o’clock. The security is tight, and there are already plenty of fans from both sides milling around. I head into the ground and find the media hub where I collect my photographer’s vest. The next few hours pass quickly as I do the preparation work for tonight’s ‘shoot’.

I’m in my pitch position a couple of hours before kick-off, and I’m behind and to the right of the goal, right in front of the Scotland fans. They are slowly starting to arrive and placing their flags along the front barrier. Two young fans have made their own banners, and I get a photo of them holding their artwork proudly aloft.

Twenty minutes before the match is due to start, I make my way around to the side of the pitch to take some photos of the pre-match rituals. First, I snap each of the Scotland players passionately belting out ‘Flower of Scotland’ before the team assemble in-front of me, and I get a decent shot of them all.

After uploading the pre-match photos, I settle in to capture images from the first half. Scotland have the better of the opening exchanges, but neither team looks like they are willing to take a risk and go for it. The game becomes quite a stale affair, and there are few opportunities for me to shoot anything meaningful.

The second half is more of the same until Vargas is injured, and it looks quite nasty. Hungary’s captain, Dominik Szoboszlai, looks visibly shaken and rushes to grab the stretcher as the crowd screams at the first-aiders to hurry up. A screen is erected around Vargas, and horrifying memories of Christian Eriksen are evoked as doctors assist the Hungary forward. Thankfully, Vargas is soon stretchered off, and the news is that he has had some kind of fit following a clash with Scotland’s keeper, Angus Gunn.

The match is sauntering towards a 0-0 draw when first Hungary hit the post and then Scotland substitute, Stuart Armstrong falls in the box amid screams for a penalty from all around me. It’s not given, and the match continues into injury time. It’s 90mins +10 when Hungary substitute Kevin Csoboth latches onto the ball in the area and steers it past Angus Gunn’s despairing right hand and into the bottom corner of the net. It’s all over for the Scots, and they know it.

A few seconds later, the final whistle goes, and there are ecstatic scenes from the Hungarian end. I go into overdrive and snap as many post-match shots as I possibly can. There is raw emotion on the pitch and in the stands. For many, the party is over. The two team captains, both Liverpool teammates, embrace.

I work on the photos for half an hour while the crowd disperses and then I head out of the stadium and make my way back to the hotel where I continue working into the early hours before finally deciding to get some sleep.

Some of the photos are selling well by the time I leave the following morning, and I’m pleased I made the journey out here. I’ve made some good contacts, and some opportunities have opened up, which I’m keen to take advantage of when I get home. Despite a delayed flight home, the journey is uneventful, and I arrive home tired but happy at 2am on Tuesday morning. I’ve got to be up for work in four hours!

Epilogue

Friedrich Schiller looks up at the starry canopy above the empty Platz and then down at his shaking, inky fingers. His short melancholic verse is written: ‘Joy, a prelude to despair’. A single tear dots the ‘i’ on his behalf as he prepares to walk the halls of the empty palace. This verse, he knows, will never be read.

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