This won’t be short!
I’ll start at the very beginning with the one thing that’s absolutely essential for any football match – a ticket. For most of the top teams in England (and probably elsewhere) demand for tickets outstrips supply. As an example, Liverpool have a 20 year waiting list for season tickets and it is now closed to new applicants.
So each team has its own process for selling tickets. But whatever they come up with it is inevitable that some fans are going to be disappointed. For LFC, for European away games, a “credit” system is in operation. For every match you buy a ticket for and attend you get a credit. Tickets for every game are sold first of all to those with the right number of credits from certain previous games. This is determined by the allocation of tickets the club receive. This rewards those who have supported the club in the earlier rounds but makes life difficult for those trying to get on the ladder starting from scratch.
This was the criteria for this galatasary game
Buying a ticket isn’t enough for the match credit. You have to actually go to the match. For European matches Liverpool, like other teams, often ask that you collect the ticket in the location where the game is being played. If you can’t attend you can nominate someone else to go in your place and as long as they collect the ticket and go to the game then you retain the credit. For this game the ticket was being sent electronically but you could still nominate someone else in your place if you couldn’t go.
Anna has full credits but she couldn’t make the game. So we needed to find someone who wanted to go and needed a ticket – otherwise Anna would lose the credit and slip a little bit down the pecking order. I put the word out and we eventually found someone. This was Tahir who lives in Bodrum and is a member of the Turkish OLSC (overseas Liverpool supporters club).
I completed all the relevant paperwork and we were good to go – Tahir had the ticket he wanted and Anna had the credit she needed.
Or so we thought until the day before ticket sales closed when we were informed that the ticket had been returned to Anna because Tahir has a Turkish address! Well this is particularly perverse. All members of the Turkish OLSC, which is officially registered with and recognised by LFC, are likely to have Turkish addresses. And to deny them the opportunity to watch Liverpool when they play in Istanbul because of it is quite an unbelievable stance to take.
So began a flurry of activity from the OLSC, friends, supporters groups and LFC ticket office staff and by the end of the next day, just as ticket sales were closing, the edict was rescinded and, once again, we were good to go and luckily it stayed that way
So eventually we’ve got our tickets and the next step is to get to the ground. The official advice was to meet in Sultanahmet Square at 17.30 to be taken to the ground by bus, in convoy. There was a warning that unless we used these buses we would not be allowed into the ground. Which actually would have been a good thing but we didn’t know that at the time.
The buses got us (about 2500 of us) to the ground for about 19.15. Which sounds ok for a 20.00 KO but we are in Istanbul with a two hour time difference which means KO was actually 22.00. We wondered what we were going to do with ourselves for nearly three hours. But in the event we needn’t have worried.
The turnstiles didn’t open until 20.00 so we were just herded in into a penned area and left to fester for 45 minutes. Once the turnstiles were open it took us nearly an hour to get through and then we were searched THREE times before allowed to our seats. By then it was nearly kick off.
The less said about the game itself the better. But I’ll have a quick whinge anyway.
Liverpool conceded a soft penalty for this after about 10 minutes
Interestingly while that is considered a penalty, this isn’t
And then we played really quite poorly and couldn’t recover.
The home crowd is very passionate and intimidating and an incredibly loud whistling noise is piped through the PA system when the away team have the ball.
After the match we were held back for 60 minutes which wasn’t too bad as we had originally been threatened with 90 minutes. Of course it was 1.00 in the morning by then when we were bussed back from whence we came.
In total of nearly nine hours of queuing and standing about with a short 90 minute break in the middle to watch our team play badly and get beat.
Luckily everyone got back safely – except most of us had a headache brought on by the whistling and dehydration. Lots of us had kebabs and beers and then crashed out…. It was nearly 4.00 and I had a relatively early start for my journey home. Paul and Jamie had a later start so they could have a lie in
One last comment- a big thank you to Tahir and the Turkish OLSC for looking after us and making us so welcome. We hope to see you at Anfield soon.
Pearl Blog 3 