I Don't Deserve A Champions League Final Ticket More Than Anyone Else But If You Can Get Me One I'll Take It

 

When Ahmet Ertegun died on my 30^th birthday, 14^th December 2006, it completely passed me by because I’d no idea who he was. Someone showed me the film of The Song Remains The Same one night at university and I bought every Led Zeppelin album after but never thought about who the person behind the red and green Atlantic Records logo was. Suddenly the death of this man led to something I never thought I’d see happen – a Led Zeppelin reunion. Rumours were rife on the internet that it was happening but who would sit in for legendary drummer John Bonham whose death in 1980 had brought an end to the band. They reformed for Live Aid in 1985 with Phil Collins, a performance the band deemed so bad they refused to let it be included in the VHS of the marathon charity concert. In September 2007, it was announced that Bonhams son Jason would play drums, I was such a big fan of all things Zeppelin I even had an album of his band, Bonham. Everything seemed right and the concert was confirmed for December at the O2, London. Now to get tickets. They were made available via a lottery system and cost £125 which was very expensive back then but I was more than willing to pay it for a band who had their best days before I was even born but were even more popular in 2007 than they ever were. According to The Guinness Book of Records 2009, there were 20 million applications from all over the world for just 16,000 tickets breaking the record of highest demand for tickets. Needless to say I didn’t get one and to make matters worse I had to listen to Chris Moyles the day after on Radio 1 saying how he was one of approximately 4,000 who got given corporate tickets, he went but wasn’t a fan before or after.

I’d already bought flights to Paris several weeks before Liverpool finally confirmed they would be in the Champions League Final on 28^th May. Now begins the long pursuit of tickets. My love for Liverpool goes back a lot further and runs a lot deeper than my love of Zeppelin. I don’t deserve a Champions League Final ticket more than anyone else but if you can get me one, I’ll take it. Since Liverpool exploded back on to the Champions League roll of honour in 2005, the popularity of the club has skyrocketed. A lad I played football with was in the Ataturk, Istanbul on the crazy night when Liverpool came back from 3 nil down at half time to win on penalties in the greatest final of all time. He told me he had no problem getting a ticket, his biggest difficulty was getting flights to Turkey. Two years later in Athens, beleaguered CEO Rick Parry said he wouldn’t play the numbers game then had to play the numbers game to explain who would get the measly 17,000 tickets allocated to the club for the replay of the final 2 years earlier against Milan. Such was the demand for tickets then, that a qualifying system had to be introduced to reward fans who went to all the Champions League games but after the 17,000 was whittled down to a mere 11,000, once commitments were made to former shareholders, corporate season ticket holders, players, former players, staff and sponsors, 3,300 fans had been to 7 games and they got tickets but there were 27,000 fans who had been to 6 games for the remaining 7,700 – a 1 in 3.5 chance of getting a seat at the hottest game in football. Athens wasn’t one of Liverpool’s greatest moments on or off the pitch. The game was a poor tactical affair won 2-1 by Milan while the Olympic stadium was totally unsuited for football. There were no turnstiles, fans were able to get in with no tickets and supporters who did have them got in to discover somebody already in their seat. A friend of mine travelled to Greece from Australia for the game and bought a ticket outside the ground for £850, a lot of money for him or me, but it turned out to be counterfeit and he didn’t get in.

Around the time Ahmet Ertegun passed away, I was planning to go to my first Liverpool match in nearly 8 years. A lot had changed between that 1 nil defeat to Aston Villa at Anfield in 1999 and New Years Day 2007. We were FA Cup holders and in the knockout stages of the Champions League for the third year running. The good times came to an end before Christmas 2009 when I was at the dead rubber defeat at home to Fiorentina. We were already out before that final game. It was a long way from Olympiakos 5 years earlier. Klopp awoke the giant in the Europa League run in 2016. That final again saw Liverpool’s demand for tickets far outweigh their split (less than a third after all the non-Liverpool and non-Seville fans got theirs) in the tiny 35,000 seater stadium in Basle. Similar to the road to Istanbul, the drive to Kyiv saw Liverpool shock everyone by getting to the final. This time less than 17,000 red men in the 70,000 crowd got tickets via the club. More than half the tickets weren’t allocated to the two teams involved – us and the then 12 time winners Real Madrid. A friend of mine is a fan card holder who goes to every home game and he was lucky enough to get one in the ballot but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go or not. His son encouraged him to go because how many opportunities are you going to get to see us play in a European Cup final? Well quite a few actually. Since I was born we’ve been in the final every 4.5 years on average but there were 20 and 11 year gaps during that time. He decided to go but maybe his hesitancy was a premonition as everything that could go wrong did. Fans who took a chance and paid for AirBnB in advance had their bookings cancelled and their accommodation put back on at grossly inflated prices once the finalists were confirmed and the usual demand for tickets and places to stay ensued. On the pitch, Liverpool lost their best player to injury and our keeper had a nightmare as we lost 3-1 to Los Blancos. It didn’t take us long to return to the biggest stage following a miracle in the semi final at home to Barcelona. The weight on the shoulders of Klopp’s men in Madrid 2019 was huge. Their manager was under pressure to end his finals hoodoo and fulfill his own prophecy that he would win something within 4 years. Once more the allocation was pitiful, less than 17,000 and the same to fellow finalists Tottenham Hotspur in their first ever Champions League final. The Wanda Metropolitano holds 67,500. A new LFC Champions League final initiative began the year before with the BOSS Nights series that had begun in Liverpool for fans to continue to sing songs and enjoy themselves in a venue in town after matches. In Kyiv, it was put on in Shevchenko Park as somewhere for tens of thousands of kopites to congregate before the game. It was a roaring success. A year later, 100,000 Liverpool fans descended upon Madrid. Unfortunately, they couldn’t all get into the final but many of them could go to the designated fan park in Plaza Felipe II with Jamie Webster, John Power from Cast and Colin Murray dj-ing to the delight of all the reds basking in the early summer sunshine. Klopp’s mentality monsters went on to produce a very professional performance to win our 6^th European Cup. I watched it in a pub in rural Northern Ireland and afterwards my friend suggested we should get on the overnight ferry from Belfast to Liverpool for the homecoming parade the next day. When I watched a million reds line the streets the next day, I wished we had gone.

No matter how few tickets Liverpool fans get through the official route, the stadiums are always two thirds full with our fans. We always find a way to get a ticket from somewhere whether it’s paying hundreds or thousands on the black market or ending up in an executive box with Berlusconi or some good soul just handing you one or travelling hundreds of miles for the promise of one. There are thousands of stories. It’s not unlike looking for an All Ireland final ticket if your county gets to Croke Park but on a much bigger scale. In February 2020, we booked to go for the parade which we predicted would be the day after the final premier league game that May but the league didn’t end until August that year and we are still waiting on our parade. My friend who saw us lose in Kyiv finally got to see us win a final this year when we beat Chelsea in the League Cup at Wembley. Not long after that I was contacted by a mate who now lives in Australia suggesting we should go to Paris, if we got there. I booked flights the next morning. Now we are there, we won’t qualify for tickets as we don’t meet the criteria but we were at Anfield for the defeats to Villa in 1999 when the highlight of the game was getting a chant going for Sean Dundee to come off the bench. In 2009, we left Belfast on a bus at 4am for a ferry from Dublin to Holyhead to see what we already knew would not be a great European night then made the long journey back via land and sea getting into the house and bed at 8am. There’s lads do that sort of thing every week and they deserve tickets first but for the rest of us there’s 25,000 not going directly to supporters of either club, can anybody get me one of those please? Thanks.