Farewell Boleyn! Hello 90s European Championships!

This has taken me the best part of a week and a half to write. It was all very topical when I started. Now I need to get it finished and posted, primarily because I've written so much I feel it would be a waste not to share it. Can't vouch for it being all that though!

It’s all over! The league title has been sewn up, thank god! And West Ham have played their last game at The Boleyn Ground aka Upton Park. It was a great game as well, with twists & turns and a thrilling finale. The scenes outside were reminiscent of the 1927 White Horse Cup Final. Thousands of people turned up without tickets and you could barely move for West Ham fans.

Then we had the trouble. I didn’t actually see it. I only actually found out that something untoward had happened at half time in the game. I’ve now heard from everyone I’ve spoken to since is that West Ham fans were involved in a riot, that we’re hooligans. I can safely say that we are not hooligans, well not 99% of us anyway. Obviously that’s not what you’ll be fed but hey ho!

I enjoyed the game, as I said earlier, but what I didn’t enjoy was the crush before the game. Even though I got to meet Joey O’Brien, he was sandwiched against me for around 20 minutes as we shuffled towards the stadium. The crush outside  was actually quite frightening at times. There were kids crying ,having to be carried by their dads, and a sense of apathy among the police officers present. A number of heated conversations took place between fans and the police, with comparisons being made with Hillsborough. I even saw a police sergeant bollock his whole team for sitting in a van and watching  on while mayhem ensued. This all seems to have missed the reporting from that night though?

Instead there’s been a huge focus on what a minority of individuals did with the United team bus. Thankfully nobody was injured outside, and we didn’t have another Hillsborough. But the whole episode brought to light issues that I have touched upon in previous posts. The dehumanisation of football fans, with respect to Hillsborough; and the lack of regard for the experience of the match going fan from the Premier League and other authorities. Why wasn’t the United game played the previous midweek, allowing the last game at the Boleyn to be at a reasonable time i.e. the previous Saturday afternoon when we played Swansea?

Aside from the negatives (I know I moan a lot), it was a great send off from a famous old ground that I hold dear to me. I first went to Upton Park in the early 1990’s when I would have been around 11 or 12. I’d been going to football matches since the late 80’s but never been taken to see the team I loved due to the stigma attached to West Ham, and English football at the time. Being a young, black boy, my parents weren’t keen for me to go to grounds renowned for rowdy, sometimes racist, fans. So my early match experiences were in the more tame atmosphere across London at Loftus Road (long story).

Believe it or not though, in well over 25 years of going to watch West Ham (including away games and cup finals), while I’ve seen the odd boozed up moron, which is something all clubs have, I’ve only ever once heard something that I’d consider racist (the deplorable hissing sound that some people think is funny to make when playing Spurs) and have never felt threatened because of the colour of my skin or for any other reason for that matter. Instead, I’ve made loads of friends and have built up a bank of wonderful, and painful, football related memories.

Maybe I was fortunate and caught the Boleyn Ground at the right time in its history. Maybe racists are cowards, as people say, and as a result nothing questionable was ever said in my presence. Maybe I was just lucky on the whole. Who knows? What I do know is that I’ll miss sitting in queues of traffic on the A13 or people outside Upton Park Station. Squeezing through the turnstiles, where my 10 year old season ticket card barely works (it normally takes about 5 goes before it’s recognised), almost banging my head on the ceiling above the urinals; and all the other quirks of our, far from perfect, famous old stadium.

I’m done talking about domestic football, the season is pretty much over and people are announcing European Championship squads. As usual there’s been a spate of pre-tournament injuries, which means we’ll be robbed of seeing the strongest squads in France. Germany will be missing Gundogan, Italy will do very well to get to the quarter finals with both Marchisio and Veratti missing from their midfield. We’re missing Danny Wellbeck, who might not be the greatest player in the world, but can bring energy and enthusiasm going forward, especially at times when you need a goal. Even the Welsh are missing Joe Ledly, who once again is probably no world beater, but will definitely leave them considerably weaker. Maybe I was just oblivious to it all but I feel like this sort of thing never used to happen, except for when we didn’t have Gazza for Euro 92.

Speaking of Euro 92, my obsession with major international tournaments of yesteryear took me back to watching clips from this tournament. I keep hearing people compare Leicester’s recent league title win to Greece’s triumph at Euro 2004. Whenever I hear this I’m prompted to remind whoever it is I’m speaking to about Euro 92. In case you’re not familiar, the eventual tournament winners, Denmark, didn’t even qualify! That’s right, back when I was a kid there was this country called “Yugoslavia” who weren’t bad, in fact they had a “golden generation”, which had previously won the World Youth Cup. They had qualified for Euro 92, and would have been one of the pre-tournament favourites; but then they went and had a civil war, which evolved mass genocide, and UEFA kicked them out of the competition. Denmark were selected to take their place as they had finished 2nd to Yugoslavia in qualifying. What a story! And this was before the likes of Peter Schmeichel were household names, well in the UK anyway.

I think he was actually a turnip even though a swede made more sense?!?

Barring the Denmark shock Euro 92 was actually a bit boring. Last time round I spoke about how you can often marry European Championships to World Cups in terms of tactics, players and even silly things like fashion. Well Euro 92 was most certainly married to Italia 90! All I can remember from England's group is low scoring draws. In case you didn’t know, we failed to get out of the group, and were knocked out by one of my most prevailing childhood memories ,which produced one of my favourite ever  bits of commentary (said by the great Barry Davies of course). On top of this, Greame “Turnip (or Swede, I think it was actually Swede as Sweden knocked us out) head” Taylor took Gary Lineker off in favour of the less threatening Alan Smith! Denying Lineker the chance to equal Bobby Charlton’s goalscoring record. Worst decision ever, especially considering we had a young lad on the bench called Alan Shearer who was much better than Smith. I think that substitution summed up both Taylor’s reign as manager and Euro 92, Smith was more functional than exciting (I’m being generous with that description) and never amounted to anything internationally.

Then there was Euro 96. Football came home! Baddiel and Skinner wrote the first incarnation of Three Lions. We actually won a penalty shootout (Rafa Nadal's uncle seeing his penalty saved by Seaman)! Our only victorious shootout so far. Euro 96 was a bit of a disappointment for me. I can remember being really excited in the build up. Two years before I’d experienced my favourite World Cup, USA 94. And the European Championships had now been expanded to 16 teams, the format used right up until the last competition. I had high hopes.

I’m probably being harsh. You had Suker’s hattrick, including a lob, against the defending champions Denmark; Poborsky’s RIDICULOUS scoop lob against Portugal at Villa Park; and... and that was about it! See it was rubbish! I’m not even having England’s performances! I remember the draw against Switzerland where we let them back into the game, the patches of average play against Scotland and a pretty uninspiring 0-0 with Spain in the quarter finals. Euro 96 is always the subject of much romanticism because it was played over here and because we agonisingly went out on penalties in the semi finals; oh and because of the aforementioned Baddiel and Skinner song, which is always associated with the tournament. But it actually wasn’t that great. Well I don’t think it was anyway.

That's enough for now. I need to go and indulge in more clips of European Championships gone by. Maybe I'll try and dig out that Spain Yugoslavia game from Euro 2000, with Alfonso and his white boots or Figo's screamer against England...

Bye!