“Football without fans is nothing. It could be the greatest game in the world, but if there are no people to watch it, it becomes nothing. Fans are the lifeblood of the game.” So said the late Jock Stein, the legendary manager of Celtic and the first man to lead a British club to triumph over Europe’s elite back in 1967. The governing body of European football, Uefa, would do well to reflect on his words in the aftermath of their catastrophic handling of the Champions’ League final in Istanbul at the weekend.
Football has come a long way since Stein bestrode the continent like a colossus, but with all the vast riches now in the game, what are we to make of the way in which supporters of Manchester City and Inter Milan, gouged for ticket prices, forced to endure a logistical nightmare, and put in harm’s way just to get to and from the game, were treated at Europe’s showpiece occasion?
Are Uefa now so awash with the sponsors’ money and so enamoured of the sovereign wealth funds’ billions, its officials and friends cosseted in their swanky hotels and their chauffeur driven cars, that they don’t know and don’t care what the fans, the people who effectively pay their wages, have to undergo in the simple act of following their team?
Whatever persuaded Uefa to hold this year’s Champions’ League final in Istanbul we do not know. A cursory inspection of a stadium built for Turkey’s failed bid for the 2008 Olympic Games and located some 13 miles from the traffic-clogged city would tell you that this was not a venue suitable for big events. The International Olympic Committee apparently felt so. But Uefa deemed it perfectly acceptable.
A sizeable majority of the 20,000 Manchester City fans who travelled to Istanbul had harrowing tales to tell. My friend John Stapleton, the highly respected TV journalist and a City fan for more than 60 years, told of his horrific two-hour journey to the ground in a bus with no water and no toilet facilities. Fans were forced to urinate out of windows and one passenger vomited, unable to cope with the searing heat.
Inside the ground, things weren’t much better. Some 15,000 City fans were served by just two concessions and Stapleton’s son had to queue for two hours to get water. The match ended after midnight local time, and the journey back to the city was fraught with danger. Buses were few and the exits gridlocked, so thousands of fans ended up walking along the side of a motorway to try and get taxis. The Stapletons saw wheelchair fans being carried across unlit terrain. For many, watching a 90-minute game of football turned into a 12-hour ordeal.
I am aware of the obvious difficulty in illiciting sympathy for football fans, who, like mass gatherings of almost any nature, can sometimes betray the worst aspects of human behaviour. But leave aside any cynicism or blithe insinuations of first-world problems and look at the bigger picture. What Saturday’s chaos in Istanbul illustrates is another example of institutional indifference to the plight of what might be termed ordinary people.
The recently re-elected Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, tweeted at the weekend: “I would like to thank everyone who once again proved Turkey’s hospitality and contributed to the smooth and successful organisation of this great event.” But politicians the world over have shown themselves to be out of touch with the struggles of those they represent.
And organisations such as Uefa are rarely brought to account for their failure. Last year they presided over near-disaster at the Champions League final in Paris, and blamed the Liverpool fans for the crush outside the stadium before eventually admitting culpability. Only 12 months later, they again appear to have cashed in on the mass appeal of football to disregard and, worse, exploit the fans, without whom the game is, as the great man said, nothing. Jock Stein will be spinning in his grave today.
