I’M NOT going to Basel.
A week of tossing and turning. Thrashing in the darkness. Trying to still a restless mind.
I’m not going to Basel. I can’t go to Basel. I really wish I was going to Basel. Circumstance is my enemy. You surely know me well enough by now, to know I’m not missing out on this lightly. You trust me here.
So where am I going to watch the final? No, seriously, where?
The event itself is beyond logic, beyond reason, in its importance. I haven’t felt this way about a single football match since the European Cup final of 2005. Even Athens in 2007 or Chelsea in 2014 didn’t shred me to absolute ribbons the way this game’s imminence has. It’s a bonus. It’s a bonus we have to win. Tossing and turning. Cannot think straight. My teeth grinding. Sleepless.
Maybe it’s because the years have been so lean. We’ve had lots of big matches to anticipate in recent times, but few so clear cut in their importance as this one. It’s a fact now that this Europa League thing — can we call it the UEFA cup still, please? – is definitively the third-biggest prize in football. Let’s go further — it’s a good deal more important than either the FA Cup or the League Cup.
The additional element, introduced last year, of Champions League qualification for the winner, is not to be scoffed at. Of course the received platitude is that it’s really just about bringing home the trophy. That wonderful, madly over-scaled silver vase with the nattily detachable base.
The glory is in lifting the cup.
Glory, though, is intrinsically linked to the status it bestows. That’s why winning the league is bigger than winning the League Cup. The former confirms that you are now, unequivocally, the best. The League Cup winner is a trophy winner. That and little more. The passer of a series of modest challenges. Like a driving test. A very worthy accessory. An achievement, but nothing to have a disco about. I wasn’t up nights before Manchester City. Not like this.
The UEFA cup though. We know it’s not the trophy that Shankly won in ’73, or that Bob Paisley claimed in ’76. It is though, up there with the prize Houllier captured in 2001. It remains what it has always been in absolute terms — a European cup.
There are no bad European cups. Even the old Cup Winners’ Cup was a thing to win (the one thing we’ve never won, as it happens). All European trophy triumphs imply a journey. The overcoming of a series of challenges. Maybe just the act of getting into a contest with those from beyond your borders implies something akin to war. Suggests something anciently noble and a bit intense. The Eurovision song contest will always be edgier than the X Factor. A diplomatic incident, a cipher. I sit awake at night and think about European football and that now timeless association between Liverpool Football Club and European competition.
Yes, Manchester United beat us to the punch in winning the European Cup first for an English side in 1968, but Bill Shankly was truly the first manager from these shores to commit himself to the continent. He saw a simple fact that many little islanders couldn’t grasp: That there was a big wide world out there and that ‘they’ might just have something to teach us.
He realised in his quest to get and keep Liverpool top in England, that this cause could be best served by the lessons learned from experiences in Europe. Bill saw so many gains to be made in Europe.
Beyond all this though, you sense he simply loved the romance of the journey; the ecstasy of the excursion, the intensity of the incursion. The colours and the lights. The planes, the trains, the automobiles. The flags and the mad hotels. The hostility and the comradery. Bill had known the tragedy of a Europe divided. He was determined to milk and relish all the opportunity and beauty of a continent finally at peace. Or at least only coldly at war.
I don’t play the Shanks card cheaply here. It’s a big year for us Europeans and Liverpudlians are the most European you can get. It’s fitting that The Reds are back in a major final. I don’t want to contemplate us not winning this, and yet again I can’t imagine just how perfect victory might feel.
That is perhaps the most surprisingly incredible thing about the football fan experience. It’s always like the first time.
There isn’t a veteran of Rome ’77, Wembley ’78, Paris ’81, or Rome again in ’84 who will decry Istanbul in ’05, because they felt a bit jaded by all that endless European Cup winning. I don’t care if you were at Anfield for St Etienne in ’77, Dortmund a month ago meant just as much to you. If it didn’t, you weren’t doing it right.
It has been a mad season. It has been a great season for me. Just like my first one. Win, draw or lose in Basel. I never think you can ask for more as a fan than being involved with a chance for silver glory on a season’s very last day. We’re already winners. The end is the end in itself.
One more night tossing and turning and given that we are all Reds here, I’ll fess up now as to why I’m really not going to Basel: It’s because of my two lads.
The eldest is 17 and has an A-level on Thursday morning. The youngest is seven and his mum won’t let me take him out of school for the days needed to complete the Swiss mission. Fair enough.
Mates have said I should go anyway. I really wanted to believe them. This season’s biggest win for me has been repeating a trick I first pulled off 11 years ago. It was 2004/05 and my Danny was just six years old. I started taking him to games with me that season, and by the second half of that year he was going to everything. My mission to brainwash him into becoming a Red had been an astonishing success. He was totally hooked by the close of 2005 and has remained so ever since.
The cruel joke in store for me was that it meant I had to miss Istanbul at the season’s end. He was too young for a trip to Turkey of that nature, and I couldn’t contemplate not seeing the European Cup through with him. We’d lived every round together. We’d sung and roared ourselves hoarse and mute in that semi-final second leg against Chelsea.
This year, I’ve worked on my youngest boy, Rafael (Rafa). He was going to homes with me before Christmas, but since the new year, we’ve been to virtually every away as well. I’ve watched his evolution from my little baby, pissing about with Super Mario on his Nintendo DS during games, to football man.
A football man who cried real football man’s tears at Wembley in February when Liverpool didn’t look like scoring an equaliser. A football man who shouts and points angrily when the ball is miscontrolled. A football man who, from nowhere, stood on his plastic seat, stuck up two fingers and screamed: “FUCK OFF” to the United end at Anfield, as Bobby Firmino banged in that second goal. That angry joy that celebrates goals which mean that ineffable something, that mean everything.
This season has become one where I now have two permanent football-going appendages, rather than just the one. Taking them to and enjoying football with the two of them has been wonderful.
I’m also beginning to see how my two boys are building a football loving/going/talking-about bond that will outlive me. It makes me happy, proud and sad. In equal doses.
I tell people I’m not going to Basel because I couldn’t possibly desert my lads. Like it’s something vaguely noble. The truth is there’s no sacrifice at all. I’m just frightened of letting them go their own way. If I leave and go without them, then they have that shared experience without me. They share it and I am left out. They have it together. I act like I am being selfless when in fact I am being selfish. I want to share in their anxiety and joy, not have them share in mine.
It’s the thing about parenthood that established parents never warn you about before you join their number. They tell you to forget about getting a good night’s sleep. To forget about going to clubs any more, or having money in your pocket to spend on yourself again. They tell you about the joy and the strains. About how ultimately it’s all worth it. They never warn you though, that one day you’ll have to let them bloody go. To give them back. What a cruel pay off that is. What a sick joke.
I’m not ready though. Not this season, not for this one. This one will be ours together. I can’t let myself go and I can’t let go.
I’m tossing and turning because the game means everything. I can’t sleep because the game is the story of how I am a different person – mortal and weakened. One day they’ll go without me, not me without them. One day they’ll be grown, separate, beyond my ken. I’ll steal this unlikely European final as a bonus one for us and it is one I want to see the Reds win so, so much.
I grind my teeth because I need Liverpool to win for us, not just for me. Me and Danny and Raffy. All the us’s in the whole wide world. It’d be easier if it was just for me.
I’m not going to Basel. I want us to be together. I wish we could always be together, watching Liverpool, celebrating goals, being joyous together. The realisation that it won’t always be like this is the most bittersweet of them all.
So let’s not mess about. Bring it home, Reds. Just bring it home.
We’ll all go the parade.
Never left a comment on an article before. Thanks for that Rob. Close to tears reading some of that!
Enjoy tomorrow night and best of luck to Danny on Thursday morning…
What an absolute fucking joy to read.
Brilliant Rob.
Really excellent Rob. Always expect your match previews to be good but that was a surprise how good it was. Heart warming.
Made me feel a bit guilty. My lad is going to the Echo with his school mates. I simply can’t get tickets together or afford to take him, if I’m honest.
Seen a lot of criticism towards people who are not looking at tomorrow as simply about lifting the shiny thing. I’m as desperate as anyone to see us lift it but I simply can’t look at life in those basic terms. Like Mike said in his brilliant piece on Friday, it’s also about momentum. Win tomorrow and the future looks so good. We’ll appear like a juggernaut with it’s breaks cut. Lose and we’ve got to pick ourselves up and rebuild. It’s the biggest game ever or certainly since the last biggest game ever. I can’t help have a beady eye on those summer transfers. I think about those nights to come where that Italian song is played and Liverpools players are about to kick off against one of the European greats.
But, I’ll be thinking about myself too and the difference a win will make to how I viewed the trip the next morning. I’ll be thinking about you and your lads embracing in ecstasy. I’ll be thinking of reds all over the world celebrating and thinking life doesn’t get any better. Obviously, I’ll be thinking about my lad at the Echo, jumping round and singing with his mates. It’s just so fuckin huge and so fuckin important in every sense that I feel sick thinking about it.
Great stuff Rob. Enjoy! Up the Reds!!!!!!!!
Ah shit Rob, you’ve rattled me again ffs. I’m an emotional wreck here mate. Nobody let any of the players read this otherwise they’ll be all over the shop.
Beautiful
Bloody hell Rob. You’ve got me thinking about my 2 year old and contemplating a future of joy and sadness. Is someone chopping onions in here?
(Speaking of onions, has anyone pointed out your likeness to Ser Davos Seaworthy off of Game of Thrones?)
Just beautiful. Brought tears to my eyes and so many similarities to my own situation.
I have two sons also and the older one is also called Danny. We watched the miracle of Istanbul together when they were 7 and 5. Only on the telly in our front room and still one of my fondest memories.
My Danny has been at uni in Bristol since last September so he’s missed out on the pilgrimages that the younger one and I have made up to Anfield for all the EL home matches this season. Man U, Dortmund, Villareal – what nights, what joy to share with my son. Shame the other one couldn’t be with us too.
Like you, Rob, I probably could have got myself to Basel. But, I would have been on my own because both lads have got exams. And again like you, it’s much more important to me to share it with them and complete this journey with them.
So we’ll be watching on the telly in the front room again. Most importantly, we’ll be together – cheering together, singing together, shaking together, shouting together, crying together, hugging together.
As time moves on and they grow into proper football men, with their own lives, these together moments may become more rare. I’m going to treasure this one!
“Win it for us, not just for me. All the us’s in the whole wide world. Bring it home, Reds. Just bring it home”
Rob, for fecks sake!
Just finishing work before heading home and then off to the match tomorrow and you have made me feel really emotional!
One of my lads is doing an A level exam and the other lad (twins) is a footie scholar and cant get off! To be honest I couldnt afford to take them. The bit about giving them back being a cruel trick is so right……ah
Might reds.
Bloody excellent article, was just beginning to calm down a bit about the match and now my head’s gone and fallen off.
I think it’s just because I want this so badly, not even so much for me (I was 17 for Istanbul, I’ve got that) but for my younger cousins (no kids yet) and for all those my age who have spent 10 years raising their kids the Liverpool way.
Oh, and I’ve got the day off on Thursday, be boss if there was a big fuck off party to go to in town.
Sort of at the other side of the spectrum here lads, but pushes a nerve with me. Istanbul was obviously amazing, but at the time I was a moody 17 year old, and decided to watch the game by myself in my room. My dad who took me to the game from aged 6 watched it downstairs with my mum and sister. Felt guilty ever since not sharing the moment with him. Athens I was at uni so missed that also.
Off to the pub with him this year. Make it so, reds.
This is my first final I’ll be attending without my Dad, who has been poorly (he’s on the mend!) the last few months.
Cardiff’s, Wembley’s, Istanbul & Athens – but not tomorrow.
This is my first comment on these pages la, although an avid reader & listener. I’m giving it double bifter in his absence tomorrow, but this article resonates in a reverse poignancy manner.
You’re doing the right thing being with your lads, when I get my own brood I’ll be making the same decision.
Is right Rob.
And the A level pass rate is 100% this year so your boy is sorted
Brilliant writing, Rob.
This kind of sums up why football is so special, especially Liverpool Football Club. The bonds it cements between fathers and sons, and/or daughters. Between friends often with little else in common. Between people of different nationalities and races with little else in common. Football, bloody magic.
Come on you reds: light up the glorious name of Liverpool FC across Europe once more.
Beautiful, this.
So you couldn’t get tickets, right?
;-)
Nice work, Rob.
My daughter’s team just won the u13s national cup today and my older daughter is in the u14 final tomorrow. If she wins and then the Mighty Reds win, I think my head will explode.
And I got home from the Madejski today at 7:40, thus proving I can make kick-off tomorrow…even if I have clocked up speeding fines greater than Venezuela’s national debt.
Can relate to this, but from the other angle. This will be the first time I’ve not watched a final with the old man, as I live outside of England. Gonna be tough, one of my best memories is watching the Owen Cup Final with him. He rarely gets excited watching matches on the TV, but he was jumping for joy at the end of it. Gonna miss that, if we pull it off tomorrow!
Amazing read… all the way from sunny South Africa, I have 2 boys , 1 is almost 3 and the other almost 3 months… I pray to share your experiences with my boys – YNWA , a simple term but extends to far to do many places..
Brilliant Rob.
I’ll be at home with my two boys too. Wouldn’t be anywhere else.
Bring it home you Redmen!
Can’t remember reading a better piece of football writing. Cheers Rob. Enjoy the match with your boys.
I remember St.Etienne and Dortmund but neither morning after. My son is now 8, and a red. Obvs.
This piece is the best article on football and fatherhood I have ever read.
Well in, Rob.
christ almighty…possibly the best article I have read on TAW and it’s a high bar. My dad is an 82 year old scouser with Alzheimers. He can’t name the players anymore but he still supports. I will be picking him up tomorrow at 11am for the 1145 kick off, going to my sisters house. The glory we have seen together. Up the reds.
I think you have just elevated yourself mate. Writing of this quality deserves an audience beyond soley LFC fans. Better than a lot of the dross in the nationals.
Rob
What and bailouts joy to read – thank you so much
Wow what a typo – absolute
What an amazing article. Ive been a fan all my life and have been nervous ever since the final whistle went vs Villareal. We have to win tomorrow, no excuses. We are Liverpool and we are playing 7th in La Liga…we must do it! #YNWA
Will be watching at home tomorrow with my old man and also my young son for the first time. Can’t wait to share it with them. Well in Rob.
Lovely piece Rob. My boy’s just turned six and I’ve been hyping the game up to him all week. I’ll be laying on the incentives – crackers and cheese, chocolate later on if he pays attention.
He also gets on the Mario during games, and complains quickly if nobody looks like scoring. I might get a half out of him. I’ll be delighted if I do. And if I’m missing a final in eleven years’ time because he’s got an exam the next day, well now I know I’ll count myself lucky.
I read this expecting something hyping the game and the squad coming of age. I’m not sure what I’ve just read but it’s incredible. Great writing. Up the reds!
The best writing on football ever! Watching tomorrow with my 3 year old twins and my wife all adorned in LFC kits. I’m states side so I’ve never been to anfield, but have been a fan since Dortmund 01. Bring it home Reds!!!! YNWA!!
Virginia, USA
I saw Miracle in Istanbul with my late father in our house. Cue the half time I was distraught and angry at the players for letting Milan run rings around us. He looks me in the eye and said ‘Have faith son. The game’s not over yet’. Young and stupid me decided to went up to my room and close the door with tears in my eyes and decided not to watch the remaining half.
2nd half starts and we all know what happened. I came bounding down the stairs 3 steps at a time just to see Xabi Alonso slot it in from the rebound. The joy that we shared at that time was out of this world. The most perfect father and son moment to be had.
So dad, if you’re watching the match tonight from up there, I will not lose faith on the Redmen. Never again will I repeat my mistake. YNWA.
Fucking belter of a preview Rob! Bring it home lads.
beautiful
Just beautiful, tear jerker
Well Rob, those two games in the 70’s meant a fuckin lot to me, ha, but I’ve moved on to the other side of the world since then and I’m in Melbourne for work for a few days and they’re not closing the Imperial tonight in readiness for a 5.00 am kick off!! Don’t beat yourself up mate, it’s one of lifes situations that only you know the answer to – it’s what having kids should be about!
By the way, what’s the team?
Fucking hell, Rob! I’m a wreck here! That was an incredible read. Bravo, mate!
This and the Kolo article nearly has never crying into my lunchtime burrito. Brilliant Rob. I’ll be watching my first final with my son. Come on Redmen
How do I delete?
This and the Kolo article nearly has me crying into my lunchtime burrito. Brilliant Rob. I’ll be watching my first final with my son. Come on Redmen
I always enjoy Robs previews but this one is a belter,
Read it late last night and again at lunchtime today, I never read anything twice,
Well in fella,
Enjoy it with your boys.
As a dad of 2 young boys, who loves his football (Gillingham FC fan – no sniggering at the back) found this magnificently poignant and touching. Brought a tear to the eyes it did! Thank you.
Good luck tonight, enjoy it with the boys. Hope the Reds bring it home.
Jack
Most moving football piece I’ve read anywhere, with the exception of some Hillsborough related articles.
Engaging and heartfelt, Rob, and something I think most fans feel about their family–the need to share and engage, and sometimes knowing that road must be travelled a little differently without them.
Fantastic Rob. Loved it. There must be someone cutting an onion near me.
Shame about the result, but still a great read none the less. Look forward to going through the same motions if I have kids someday.