PRAGUE AWAITS
AZ Alkmaar 0 West Ham 1
This would prove a memorable night in so many ways for me, after following this club and its legacy around for over half a century. That was what I was thinking as I walked down the long street in the direction of the stadium. The worst thing about this game is that John and I have travelled to it, but when we got to the hotel earlier where the tickets were given out, the way they always have done since we’ve been making these journeys in Europe, there was only one ticket: mine. In the quarter-final I’d also been able to get a ticket, but John had not, so he has to have this one. It’s a disappointment not being able to get to the semi-final, to this crucial game in West Ham’s history, but I wouldn’t have got the last ticket, had it not been for John. So fair is fair.
Except John won’t take the ticket. That’s the sort of person he is. We’ve been in Alkmaar since yesterday, and when we arrived on the Wednesday, we realised that evening it was the annual Alkmaar City Run, by night, so after checking in at the hotel we took our seats in the square outside one of the bars along which route the second and final mile of the run would take place. What a fabulous city. It had to be, somehow. This was the backdrop for a great event. We both knew that on the Wednesday when we sat there eating our meal and supping at the local beer as the runners passed by the city centre area. Alkmaar is hardly a city, with a population of just 113,000. Hounslow has 300,000 residents; three times as many. But Alkmaar is a very special place. The monuments and medieval courtyards date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, and some of the older houses there look like they’ve been preserved in aspic. Perfect, beautiful and colourful. It’s hard to walk round the streets and not be transfixed by what you see.
We go to see the stadium in the afternoon the next day. It’s quite a walk to the edge of the city, but worth it, as we know only one of us is going to get to the game. We walk around, gauge the size. It feels strangely hollow and neutral without people, with a kind of cycle moat around its grounds. There are a few police cars parked around, but left empty. We have to duck under rails and climb across what look like canal spaces cut into the grounds, but without water. In the end we are stopped, questioned, and moved on. It seems utterly impossible that this is the scene of our access to a final to be played in Prague next month. We walk back, slightly gloomily, the bridge to kick off narrowing with every step.
The ‘E’ in ‘United’ is missing in that last picture, not unlike John, as I walk down the long street in the direction of the stadium. Tony Gale was with us on the coach that took us just short of the ground, chatting about the game. Comparing today’s team with the one he played in. He’s entitled to do that, as one of Bonzo’s greats. We’ve been talking about his book, ‘That’s Entertainment,’ that will be published later this year. He said the hardest thing has been making the decision about what to leave out, rather than what to put in. It’s a similar problem tonight for David Moyes, but in the end he’s decided to leave Pablo Fornals on the bench and give the starting playmaker role to Saïd Benrahma. Benrahma was man of the match by a mile in the first leg, so he’s gone with form. When people sometimes say that Moyesy is old school and could do with being a little more experimental sometimes, well I think he’s done that tonight, to be fair.
I’m reading while I queue about Hammers’ fans who make the trip to all the away games, without a ticket, but who always get in. On several recent posts they have shamelessly described their tricks at the turnstiles, and remember this is in an age dominated by supposedly foolproof online ticketing systems, QR code readers, and unduplicatable barcode information. And yet they get past it, with smudged tickets, impossibly complicated stories of why they don’t have one of the tickets given out earlier today at the hotel. A system that is actually specially designed to keep these people out. And still they somehow get in. When I am finally in the ground, I overhear a couple of them sharing stories about how they made it through security, past the dogs and the QR code readers. I can’t bear to listen, knowing that John is back at the hotel, or in a bar somewhere watching the game.
13 Alphonse Areola, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 4 Kurt Zouma, 27 Nayef Aguerd, 23 Thilo Kehrer, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 11 Lucas Paquetá, 28 Tomas Souček, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 9 Michail Antonio
Substitutes: 8 Pablo Fornals, 18 Danny Ings, 12 Flynn Downes
Goalscorer: Pablo Fornals
