Just thouht it was nice to read something positive from an outsiders perspective about the final.
Liverpool fans, singing from the heart
By Chuck Culpepper, Special to the Times
11:49 AM PDT, May 24, 2007
Liverpool fans
Liverpool fans
click to enlarge
ATHENS -- A visit to a stratospheric European soccer match can remind an American of a couple of things about us Americans.
We just don't sing enough, and we just don't like sports all that much. We sort of dabble in them, really. We're only garden-variety obsessed.
For unearthly crowd spectacle, Wednesday night's European Champions League final rated just about peerless. For one thing, it usually features fans from two different nations and cultures, alternating in booming out songs.
Even if you can't understand Italian much other than grazie, the sound of AC Milan fans singing Wednesday night could make the back of your neck say grazie. And when Liverpool fans hold aloft their scarves and croon across the premises their adopted anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone," its boom can make you wonder if you're seeing and hearing what you're seeing and hearing.
There's really nothing on Earth like a giant mass of bald and tattooed male brutes singing a Broadway show tune.
Which brings up an oddity: While Americans tend to sing before games but infrequently during them, American songs contribute mightily in other places.
Surely when that beautiful 33-year-old Valerie June Carter Cash co-wrote "Ring Of Fire" with Merle Kilgore in 1962, and one Arkansas-born J.R. "Johnny" Cash released it in 1963, they never imagined multiple nations of soccer fans would join in a stadium rendition 28 minutes before a major kickoff in 2007.
Or that English fans en masse would hum its eight-note introduction on train platforms in England, Greece and elsewhere.
Surely when New Yorkers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II penned "You'll Never Walk Alone" for their 1945 Broadway musical "Carousel," they never imagined it would thunder clear into the 21st century as manna for soccer fans of Liverpool especially and other clubs additionally (such as Celtic of Scotland).
Their song would wind up riding to No. 1 in 1963 with a band of Liverpudlians (Gerry and the Pacemakers), its title ending up carved into the metal gates of Liverpool's Anfield Stadium? Please.
And surely the oddest story would be that of "Is This The Way To Amarillo," an European soccer anthem known to play at British weddings to joyous guests who don't know Amarillo from an armadillo.
When Neil Sedaka — Neil Sedaka! — and Howard Greenfield wrote that in 1971, the idea it would go unknown in America but No. 1 in Germany and Spain in 1971, then the United Kingdom in 2005, would've surpassed farfetched.
There they are, though, all of them, a reminder that singing beats not singing in general, as anyone could've learned on the metro to the Olympic Stadium Wednesday night, after Liverpool fans boarded in a horde and turned that poor train into a heaving, wobbling steam room.
That metro spectacle, along the 10 stops from the middle of Athens to the 2004 Olympic zone, conjured that other thought, the one about devotion.
You can mine the passion pits of college football, tour the eardrum dens of college basketball, roam the world a little, and run across the equal of Liverpool's devotion precisely . . .
Never.
Never never never never never.
Maybe only the spectacle of Indian and Pakistani cricket could match or trump.
As Liverpool fans boarded three hours before kickoff, you could feel the train get slightly, almost literally tipsy. Had the train not blessedly featured open windows, unsuspecting passengers could've grown intoxicated via inhalation.
They sang out the windows to Athenians standing on platforms. As the train would pull into stops to reveal villages filled with Liverpudlians in trademark red, they'd sing to them, and their brethren would sing back. They sang about Rafa Benitez, their beloved Spanish manager, about Steven Gerrard, their beloved skipper, about how they dream a team full of Jamie Carraghers. (He's their primo defender.)
They sang until they arrived at the stadium stop, where the windows revealed a throng of ticket-less Liverpool fans whose expanse could drop your jaw. Then they descended the stairs and sang some more, about AC Milan's squandering of a 3-0 lead in the 2005 final between the two clubs.
For that, they used another American tune that's Euro-ubiquitous by now, the Village People's 1979 "Go West:"
"Three-nil, and you messed it up,
"Three-nil, and you messed it up . . ."
They didn't used "messed," but maybe we could. Then they sang some more on their way to stand with their tribe outside impenetrable stadium fences. Then four hours later they lost to AC Milan 2-1, whereupon the Liverpool fans who did get in did something especially wise.
They began singing.
By Chuck Culpepper, Special to the Times
11:49 AM PDT, May 24, 2007
Liverpool fans
Liverpool fans
click to enlarge
ATHENS -- A visit to a stratospheric European soccer match can remind an American of a couple of things about us Americans.
We just don't sing enough, and we just don't like sports all that much. We sort of dabble in them, really. We're only garden-variety obsessed.
For unearthly crowd spectacle, Wednesday night's European Champions League final rated just about peerless. For one thing, it usually features fans from two different nations and cultures, alternating in booming out songs.
Even if you can't understand Italian much other than grazie, the sound of AC Milan fans singing Wednesday night could make the back of your neck say grazie. And when Liverpool fans hold aloft their scarves and croon across the premises their adopted anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone," its boom can make you wonder if you're seeing and hearing what you're seeing and hearing.
There's really nothing on Earth like a giant mass of bald and tattooed male brutes singing a Broadway show tune.
Which brings up an oddity: While Americans tend to sing before games but infrequently during them, American songs contribute mightily in other places.
Surely when that beautiful 33-year-old Valerie June Carter Cash co-wrote "Ring Of Fire" with Merle Kilgore in 1962, and one Arkansas-born J.R. "Johnny" Cash released it in 1963, they never imagined multiple nations of soccer fans would join in a stadium rendition 28 minutes before a major kickoff in 2007.
Or that English fans en masse would hum its eight-note introduction on train platforms in England, Greece and elsewhere.
Surely when New Yorkers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II penned "You'll Never Walk Alone" for their 1945 Broadway musical "Carousel," they never imagined it would thunder clear into the 21st century as manna for soccer fans of Liverpool especially and other clubs additionally (such as Celtic of Scotland).
Their song would wind up riding to No. 1 in 1963 with a band of Liverpudlians (Gerry and the Pacemakers), its title ending up carved into the metal gates of Liverpool's Anfield Stadium? Please.
And surely the oddest story would be that of "Is This The Way To Amarillo," an European soccer anthem known to play at British weddings to joyous guests who don't know Amarillo from an armadillo.
When Neil Sedaka — Neil Sedaka! — and Howard Greenfield wrote that in 1971, the idea it would go unknown in America but No. 1 in Germany and Spain in 1971, then the United Kingdom in 2005, would've surpassed farfetched.
There they are, though, all of them, a reminder that singing beats not singing in general, as anyone could've learned on the metro to the Olympic Stadium Wednesday night, after Liverpool fans boarded in a horde and turned that poor train into a heaving, wobbling steam room.
That metro spectacle, along the 10 stops from the middle of Athens to the 2004 Olympic zone, conjured that other thought, the one about devotion.
You can mine the passion pits of college football, tour the eardrum dens of college basketball, roam the world a little, and run across the equal of Liverpool's devotion precisely . . .
Never.
Never never never never never.
Maybe only the spectacle of Indian and Pakistani cricket could match or trump.
As Liverpool fans boarded three hours before kickoff, you could feel the train get slightly, almost literally tipsy. Had the train not blessedly featured open windows, unsuspecting passengers could've grown intoxicated via inhalation.
They sang out the windows to Athenians standing on platforms. As the train would pull into stops to reveal villages filled with Liverpudlians in trademark red, they'd sing to them, and their brethren would sing back. They sang about Rafa Benitez, their beloved Spanish manager, about Steven Gerrard, their beloved skipper, about how they dream a team full of Jamie Carraghers. (He's their primo defender.)
They sang until they arrived at the stadium stop, where the windows revealed a throng of ticket-less Liverpool fans whose expanse could drop your jaw. Then they descended the stairs and sang some more, about AC Milan's squandering of a 3-0 lead in the 2005 final between the two clubs.
For that, they used another American tune that's Euro-ubiquitous by now, the Village People's 1979 "Go West:"
"Three-nil, and you messed it up,
"Three-nil, and you messed it up . . ."
They didn't used "messed," but maybe we could. Then they sang some more on their way to stand with their tribe outside impenetrable stadium fences. Then four hours later they lost to AC Milan 2-1, whereupon the Liverpool fans who did get in did something especially wise.
They began singing.
nice one on the warm pocket joke, i bet its been a while since anyone has felt that. I was envying the atmosphere in the buildup, it looked awesome.
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