'It's the hope that gets you': Spurs and Liverpool fans go head-to-head

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jun/01/liverpool-tottenham-madrid-fans-champions-league-final

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O me, of little faith. When I accepted an invitation to speak at the Hay festival in January, it never occurred to me to check what day this year’s Champions League final was being played. Spurs reached the knockout stages of the competition thanks to a late goal away to Barcelona, but that was the limit of my ambition. The final was for other clubs – bigger, slicker clubs.

Then we thumped top German side Borussia Dortmund. That wasn’t what we do, I told myself. Normal service will soon be resumed. Next came all-conquering Manchester City. All the way up to the Etihad Stadium I asked myself what I was doing, making a 400-mile round trip that was bound to end in disappointment. I thought Spurs had blown it, in classic Spurs style, conceding a goal in the dying moments of injury time. A minute later came the VAR offside ruling. I drove home in shock. That wasn’t what we do, I told myself. Normal service will soon be resumed.

I've been a Spurs fan since 1966 and I've waited more than 50 years for this moment

The second leg of the semi-final against Ajax appeared to be going entirely to plan. At half-time, we were 3-0 down on aggregate, playing badly and certain to go out. Two goals from Lucas Moura early in the second half almost did for me. As the late Peter Cook once said, with Spurs, it’s always the hope that gets you. With almost the last kick of the game, Moura completed his hat-trick and Spurs were in the final for the first time. I cried tears of joy.

I’ve been a Spurs fan since 1966, when I became obsessed with Jimmy Greaves, and I’ve waited more than 50 years for this moment. A few FA Cup wins, two Uefa Cups and a handful of League Cups aside, Tottenham’s glory years were before I supported the club – just like me to arrive once the party was over. But I also cried tears of sadness, because my team were going to play the biggest game in their 136-year history and I wasn’t going to be there. Having a prior commitment was the most Spursy thing I could have contrived to do.

Spurs and I had always been the perfect fit. I’ve often wondered whether it was the club that chose me, rather than the other way around. We certainly seemed made for one another: decades of underachievement, a heroic sense of injustice, a seemingly infinite capacity for self-destruction, an undeniable sense of the absurd. My fragile psyche needed to be tantalised with riches, but rewarded with next to nothing. In short, I needed an abusive relationship, and Spurs were the perfect partner. A team that kept on winning, playing perfect football, week-in week-out, would have got to me in the end, reminding me of my own inadequacy. I needed a team that went from the sublime to the idiotic in a heartbeat; Spurs have failed so that I don’t have to.

The last few years, under the managership of Mauricio Pochettino, have been a challenge. OK, so we haven’t actually won anything, but we have qualified for the Champions League four seasons in a row and consistently finished above our arch-rivals, Arsenal. This is a record of success that would have been unimaginable even five years ago. I can’t pretend I haven’t enjoyed beating teams that have always rather patronised us. But I also can’t pretend there haven’t been losses. After the best part of two years playing in the sterile atmosphere of Wembley, Spurs have moved into their new, state-of-the-art ground on the site of the old stadium. And although it’s undeniably impressive, and the ground you’d expect a top club to have, I rather miss the old-school nature of White Hart Lane, where I had come to know all the people sitting near me, with whom I could share the ups and downs. I’m sure I will get used to the new place in time – especially if we carry on winning – but I hope I never take it for granted.

Not that there is too much chance of that. Sure, Spurs are not exactly poor, and, compared with most teams, we’ve got nothing to moan about; but with Tottenham there is always a sense of transience, of fragility. This past season has seen Spurs at their most sublime and their most ridiculous; they have somehow contrived to qualify for the Champions League final despite losing 13 Premier League games, including one against Bournemouth that was as memorable as any of those against Barcelona, Manchester City and Ajax. Needing a win to secure a top-four finish against a side with nothing to play for, Spurs battered Bournemouth for 40 minutes, missing chance after chance. Tottenham then managed to get two players sent off within five minutes and defended gallantly for almost the entire second half, only to concede from a corner in injury time. The very essence of the old Spurs.

This season has seen Spurs at their most sublime and their most ridiculous

Part of the pleasure and pain for Spurs’ fans is not knowing which team will turn up in Madrid. Liverpool fans will argue that this is their moment; that their team would have won the Premier League title in any other season and have been starved of success. I would gently disagree. Liverpool have won the European Cup/Champions League on five occasions; they reached the final last year and could well do so again next year. Their chance will come again. Ours may not.

Reaching the final of the biggest club competition in the world is not what Spurs do. Just one more heave, one moment of inspiration – hell, I’d settle for one moment of outrageous luck – and I could die happy, knowing that Spurs have done the thing we do not do. And if we do win, I’ll know why: it will be because I wasn’t there. John Crace

‘All thoughts of biology revision were out the window as we joined Liverpool’s red army on the streets’: a fan’s tale

In the runup to this season’s end, I found myself breathlessly telling people that, if Liverpool won the Premier League, it would be a first in my lifetime. This isn’t strictly true: I was eight months old when the club won their last domestic league title in April 1990, a record 18th, after a period of 80s domination. But we have not won since the creation of the Premier League in 1992. In the next decades, our great rivals Manchester United were notoriously successful in “knocking Liverpool off their fucking perch”, as Alex Ferguson put it when they surpassed our record. Unlikely candidates – Leeds United (1992), Blackburn Rovers (1995), Leicester City (2016) – have all won the league since we did. I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt.

It still hurts, because this season, one of the most exciting of recent times, Liverpool were pipped to the post by Manchester City (my grandad’s club, who have gone from sodden terraces of disappointment to UAE-bankrolled world beaters).

Even people with a passing interest in football admitted the race caught their attention. The top spot changed hands 32 times. We lost only a single league game all season: to Manchester City, at a time when a win would have taken us 10 points clear. City won the title with 98 points. Liverpool, with 97, were the highest-scoring runners-up in history. The heartbreak was tempered by a pride in how “the boys” played and developed. But also: a stunning Champions League semi-final triumph over Barcelona was the real consolation. More on this later.

Supporting Liverpool is as much a vocation as a hobby. Fans of clubs that are consistently mid-range performers – or in the lower leagues, with centre-halves who double as plumbers or firemen – rightly get credit for sticking with teams that have little chance of glory. But imagine supporting a club that once ruled supreme, but has been reduced to domestic also-rans. I have many friends from the generation before me, not from Liverpool, who support the club due to our dominance during their 80s childhoods. There are also Reds supporters around the world, rather disparagingly known as “armchair fans”, which is unfair: if you’re in, say, Nigeria, that’s quite the journey to make. It also suggests the rest of us are lacing up and actually contributing on the pitch. (Although – humblebrag – in my case I sort of did, playing for Liverpool FC Girls.)

In my lifetime, the stage we have dominated is the big one: the Champions League

In my lifetime, the stage we have dominated – the trophy most lifted and kissed – is the big one: the Champions League. We are the most successful British club in Europe. As well as winning five times, we won the Uefa Cup three times and the Super Cup thrice. In these competitions, we are outperformed only by Real Madrid, Milan, Barcelona and Sevilla.

I remember the 2005 Champions League victory against Milan – known as the Miracle of Istanbul, after the city where the final was held – as clearly as if it were under a microscope. I was 15, in the middle of my GCSEs. Liverpool were losing 3-0 at half-time. As the players walked off the pitch after 45 minutes, Milan’s Hernán Crespo – who had scored twice – stroked the cup on the plinth by the stadium tunnel, as though it was already his.

It wasn’t. In the space of six second-half minutes, we mounted a spectacular comeback, levelling the match. Captain Steven Gerrard, who grew up in the Liverpool district of Huyton, scored a header like a shot from a cannon. The commentator Clive Tyldesley’s disbelieving cry of “Hello. Hello! Here we go!” as Gerrard threw his arms in the air and urged the crowd to raise the roof still sends shivers down my spine.

Liverpool won, thanks to a penalty shootout performance by the keeper Jerzy Dudek inspired by our former goalie, Bruce Grobbelaar, whose “spaghetti legs” had so unnerved Roma spot kickers in a 1984 European final. It was the fifth time we had won Europe’s top competition. The club were rewarded by taking the actual cup home, not a replica: this one’s for keeps.

The scenes that night in Liverpool were Scouse bacchanalia. All thoughts of biology revision were out of the window as my teen group took to the streets to join the joyous red army stopping traffic, faces flushed Liverpool red. An estimated one million people came out for the open-top bus victory parade.

But our history is tinged with tragedy. In the 1985 European Cup final against Juventus, held in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, 39 people (mostly Juventus fans) died in a crush. Just four years later, the Hillsborough disaster resulted in the death of 96 Liverpool fans. The Sun newspaper, which smeared fans with wholly false stories, is still rarely seen in the city. It took over a quarter of a century for an inquiry to come to the conclusion that the supporters were “unlawfully killed”, and the police on duty that day are still to be held fully accountable. It’s the sheer number of highs and lows that marks Liverpool out from other clubs, from these tragedies, to managerial legends Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, to goal machines Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen, to the teenage fan Michael Shields, pardoned for a dubious Bulgarian conviction for attempted murder.

Manchester United’s stadium is known as the Theatre of Dreams, but this descriptor is better suited to Anfield, which lays claim to the best atmosphere. Liverpool would never, as Arsenal did, have sold their stadium’s name to an airline (the Emirates). And nobody can argue with the emotional impact of club anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone (YNWA).

If this season ended in domestic disappointment, there is the potential for a glimmering silver lining. In a European performance as miraculous as Istanbul, we overturned a 3-0 first‑leg deficit to Barcelona in the semi-final. We had to win 4-0 to get through. We did win 4-0. We won from perhaps one of the most ingenious corner kicks ever taken, by Trent Alexander-Arnold; mind as sharp as a mathematician. Mo Salah, injured on the sidelines, in a Never Give Up T-shirt, joined the line of players, arm-in-arm, saluting the famous Kop stand at the final whistle.

Much of our success this season is down to Jürgen Klopp, the German manager with the gleaming dental work

Much of our success this season is down to Jürgen Klopp, the German manager with the gleaming dental work. Other managers are fined for angrily throwing water bottles down, or screaming at officials; Klopp gets into trouble for running and skipping on to the field in uncontained celebration.

He has reinvigorated the club with savvy buys and a joyful offensive style of play that features frequent on-field back-heels and flicks. In his two seasons, he has taken us to three cup finals (we were in the Champions League final last year, losing 3-0 to Real Madrid). The future looks as bright as those teeth of his.

Bring on tonight. Bring on the Champions League final. Bring on next season. YNWA. Hannah Jane Parkinson

• The game will be screened on BT Sport 2 at 8pm

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