PRAGUE AWAITS
AZ Alkmaar 0 West Ham 1
18th May 2023 would prove a memorable night in so many ways for me, after following this club and its decaying legacy 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 the game was that though John and I had both travelled to it, when we’d got to the hotel where the tickets were given out, the way they always had been since we’d been making these journeys in Europe, there was only one ticket to be had: mine.
In the quarter-final I’d also been able to get a ticket, but John had not, so I would have to let him have this one. I prepared myself for the disappointment of not being able to get to the semi-final, this crucial game in West Ham’s recent history. I wouldn’t have got the last ticket, had it not been for John. So fair had to be fair. Except John wouldn’t take the ticket. That’s the sort of person he is.
The whole trip out had been memorable for more reasons than the game. We got to Alkmaar late afternoon on the Wednesday, and soon realised that our arrival was also the date of the annual Alkmaar City Night Run, 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, and the backdrop for two great sporting events. We both felt the moment that evening as we sat there scoffing the local burger and chips and supping at the Dutch beer as the local runners passed through the city centre.
Alkmaar is hardly a city though, with a population of just 113,000. The London Borough of Hounslow has nearly 300,000 residents. But Alkmaar is an unquestionably special place. The monuments and medieval courtyards date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, and some of the older houses look like they’ve been preserved in aspic. Perfect architectural designs, chocolate box cute and colours like a paint swatch. It’s hard to walk round the streets and not be transfixed by what you see.
We went to see the stadium in the afternoon the next day. It was two kilometres to the edge of the city, but worth the effort, as we knew only one of us was going to get to the game that evening. We circled the ground, gauging the perimeter. It felt strangely hollow and neutral without anyone there, with a kind of cycle moat around its grounds. There were a few abandoned police cars parked around, windows open. We had to duck under rails and climb across what look like canal spaces cut into the grounds, but without water. In the end we got stopped, questioned, and moved on. It seemed utterly impossible that this empty ground was the access to a European final to be played in Prague next month. We walked back, slightly gloomily, the bridge to kick off narrowing with every step.
I’ve noticed that the ‘E’ in ‘United’ is missing in that last picture, not unlike John that night. It would prove to be one of the most ridiculous evenings of my life following this unique team.
A couple of hours later I found myself walking down the long street in the direction of the stadium. Tony Gale had been with us on the coach that took us to an area just short of the ground, chatting about the game. Comparing today’s team with the one he played in. He is of course entitled to do that, as one of Bonzo’s greats. We’d been talking about his book, ‘That’s Entertainment,’ that was to be published later that year. He said the hardest thing had been making the decision about what to leave out, rather than what to put in.
It was a similar problem that evening for David Moyes, but in the end he 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 went with form. When people sometimes say that Moyesy is old school and could do with being a little more experimental, well I think he managed it that evening.
I’m reading on my phone as I queue about Hammers’ fans who make the trip to all the away games without a ticket, but who somehow always manage to get in. On several recent posts they have shamelessly described their tricks at the turnstiles to gain access. Remember this is an age dominated by supposedly foolproof online ticketing systems, QR code readers, and unduplicatable barcode information. And yet these interlopers hurdle every online obstacle, with their smudged tickets, sleight of hand generated evidence and impossibly complicated stories of why they don’t have one of the tickets given out earlier that day 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.
After just two minutes Jesper Karlsson gets in behind the Hammers’ defence with a chance to level the tie, but can’t quite reach the ball as it drops over the back four directly into his path. Even if he had, the big screen replay shows him to have been marginally offside. AZ Alkmaar are unbeaten at home in the last 25 matches, a fact that can’t have escaped the notice of Moyes as he’d planned his tactics for the game.
But West Ham control the ebb and flow of the game in the first half an hour, Bowen shooting just wide after a neat one-two down the right with Thilo Kehrer. Ten minutes later a breakout with Rice and Antonio takes the ball up to Paquetá, who positions himself for a left-footed effort from outside the area which clips the post before spinning away for a goal kick.
This is all happening at the other end of the pitch, but West Ham will attack their fans’ end in the second half, and as they’ve had the better of most of the first, we may then have something to celebrate.
Over the half-time break I survey our cornered end of the AZ Stadion, which is a descending wall of stepped concrete with rows of flimsy black plastic seats. West Ham fans around me have ignored the suggested seating plan, stepping in front and to the side of the seats. There are many websites which boast about the design of the stadium, one offering a time-lapse transformation of the build on you tube.
Curious, I pull at one of the seats to see how strongly it is glued to the concrete steps below. Pretty strongly. There is, however, nothing in the make-up of the seat behind me that might make me want to sit on it. It terms of comfort, it’s slightly preferable to have its edges dig into the back of your knees than the rear of the back dig into the base of your shoulder blades. And so there we all are, stood up around the seats. People are in clumps of fifteen or twenty across the away end, the impression being that many more than the allocation number could have fitted in.
The second half is soon underway, but before I can get my laughing gear around AZ Alkmaar’s continued ineptitude, I become aware with a split second’s notice that some character behind me, weighing in at around 16 stone, has climbed onto the plastic seat behind me without testing whether or not it might support his weight, and has lost his balance and is about to collapse onto me. I barely have half a second to take evasive action as he pushes me onto the guy in front, nursing his beer, who moves to the left, skilfully avoiding dropping any, though it looks as though he may be about to land a little awkwardly. I, meanwhile, am continuing my fall to the right, headed for the climb of concrete steps below me. In the remaining half second, I just have enough time to resign myself to a broken leg or hitting my head on the concrete, or perhaps both.
By the same miracle, possibly the same one that has got us to a European semi-final, I manage to roll slightly, mid air, absorbing the impact across my arm and backside. Incredibly painful but, it would appear, nothing broken. I look up from the ground at this brute who is staring down at me from above, smiling. I hear myself say, “Get that laughing c*** off me or I’ll fucking lamp him.” The 16 stone smiling man is pulled away from me by his more svelte friend, who apologises, and drags his charge several steps away from the scene of the crime.
I notice to my right that the guy with the beer appears to be okay, and is finishing his pint. A woman sits me down, offers me water and some kind words. Only I could fall down a flight of concrete steps in the middle of a European semi-final, and then get immediately triaged. A guy on the left, who I vaguely recognise, offers me some jelly babies from a tupperware container. Sugar, see? I grab a handful. The woman is talking to me reassuringly as my brain slips back into place. Her name is Jenny, and the man with the beer is her husband, Russell. They seem more interested in my welfare than whether Alkmaar might be about to upset the form book. I lose track of time for a bit, but then the game returns and we all stand up again, though I can see out of the corner of my eye that Jenny is not convinced that I am okay. I look around behind me but smiler and his handler are now nowhere to be seen. I decide to concentrate on seeing whether or not we can actually get to our first European final for 47 years.
Russell, now to my right, declares, ‘You’re the PA Announcer. It’s the PA Announcer, Jen,’ he says, for emphasis.
‘How do you work that out?’ I ask, not unreasonably.
‘I recognised your voice!’ he says.
‘Have you ever heard me swear on the mike?’ I ask him. He just laughs. Whatever else you might want to say about these two, they’re a great double act, and tonight they are both my saviours. I still have a very sad slightly blurred picture of them on my phone that I don’t remember taking, but it does prove that I didn’t dream it.
West Ham are finally looking like they want to win this one in the ninety minutes and led by Rice and the fresh legs of Pablo Fornals, recently on as a substitute for Benrahma, they push forward again and again. AZ Alkmaar have been disappointing, mustering only two shots on target so far in the whole game. In the fourth minute of injury time, with Alkmaar committed up front, Fornals wins the ball in the centre circle and breaks away into a giant space in front of him, no defender remotely close enough to catch him, before sliding his shot home past the advancing Ryan, from twenty yards. It is quite simply the most delicious of finishes, a total solo goal and he climbs the advertising hoarding below us to gesticulate with his trademark salute.
We. Are. In. The. Final.
But the action from the evening still has one remaining scene to play out. The disappointed and raucous home fans, we might call them the Alkmaar Ultras, have broken past the limited police presence, and are heading through unpoliced barriers towards the pitchside section where the sponsors, club officials and players’ wives and families are sitting. Standing in their way are a few West Ham fans, making their way down from the upper stand. One of them, observing the oncoming rabble of thugs, stands at the top of the steps they will have to climb.
One of my friends later described how this man, Knollsy, stood there at the top of the steps, repelling any fans who were stupid enough to try to get past him. Not that Ultra after all, it would seem. He declared modestly afterwards that it was just what any West Ham fan would have done in the same circumstances. When I’ve looked since at pictures of that Alkmaar mob, most wearing black balaclavas, trying to get into the West Ham section that night, I think he might have been being unnecessarily modest.
‘Knollsy’ has become a West Ham legend in the years since, and for the next day pictures of him, with stories of his bravery and resistance alongside the details of West Ham’s win, were plastered over the back of all the national papers in the UK. The club give him a season ticket for the 2023-24 season and a ticket for the Europa Conference League final, as a special guest of honour.
Our potential opponents in that final, meanwhile, are also still bashing it out in extra time in Switzerland, Fiorentina having secured an unlikely 2-1 away win against Basel over the ninety minutes to level up the aggregate score at 3-3. I think about the door of the hotel room back in the city. Each room is named after a famous European region. ‘Toscane’ was the name on ours. Italian for ‘Tuscany.’ And, I notice, the capital city of the region is Florence. Odd that I’m only noticing that now.
Maybe we will be meeting Fiorentina in the final, after all.
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
