Pictures, top, by yours truly, from inside the City of Manchester stadium last night. More here.
Main picture taken by terry6082 Books, showing the clearup in Piccadilly Square, Manchester, this morning.
My dad and I had a memorable time last night at the Uefa Cup final in Manchester, despite Rangers losing 2-0 to a Zenit St Petersburg side that richly deserved its win. Our own Kevin McCarra, sat a few rows behind me, filed
this excellent report if you want to find out more about the game.
Suffice to say that, at least until the final whistle, it was a fine night to be a Rangers fan; we bluenoses packed the stadium, apart from a noisy corner of Russians, and created an atmosphere the likes of which I’ve never encountered before. The team worked hard - with some flair in the second half - but to no avail. Nearly all the Rangers fans, however, stayed both to applaud the winners, and salute the Rangers team still several games from the end of an epic season.
It was well worth the extortionate ticket price and journey - Rangers last made a European final two years before I was born, so it may well be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Unfortunately, what happened well away from the stadium may live in the wider public’s memory for far longer than the match. As readers in the UK will be aware, hundreds of
Rangers fans rioted after a big TV screen - one of several erected in Manchester city centre squares for fans who arrived without a ticket - broke down. There were shocking scenes in the city centre as fans battled police, including one incident
where an officer was tripped up and set upon by a mob as he lay on the ground (he escaped, with
a broken arm reasonably minor injuries).
We - and the 30,000 or so Rangers fans returning from Eastlands - were unaware of the trouble until we got back to the city centre. Looking for a train back to our hotel in Leeds (Manchester was sold out long before Rangers even qualified) the scenes inside Piccadilly station were chaotic, and tense. Vast numbers of people, massively drunk, were quickly losing patience amid a complete lack of information and trains.
I saw one bound for Leeds leaving very late, with only three carriages and a handful of railway staff trying to marshal the crowd on board. We couldn’t get on board. A huge queue for one platform snaked up ramps and round an upper level of the station. Outside, another neverending line for taxis was moving slowly, but by midnight many fans were desperately searching for buses, cars, anything to get them away.
We only got back thanks to the intervention of saintly nephew Andrew, a student in the city, who agreed to drive us out the chaos in the small hours of the morning.
What caused all the problems? Drunk thugs, clearly. And yes, they were in the minority - police think 200,000 people descended on the city, of which only a few hundred went nuts. And you can hardly blame the police for struggling to cope, especially at only two weeks’ notice. A screen breaking down was just bad luck, and since most of the fans affected were bussed to another venue, it looked like the backup plan was there - and it worked.
I’d love to offer up a mighty, society-shifting plan for curing thugs (and the bigots, of which there remain too many among the Rangers support - despite the huge, decent majority). Instead, I’m only capable of reflecting on why so many fans travelled, and learn some lessons for next time.
Fans - including me - just wanted to be there, near the first European occasion the side have seen in decades. I wouldn’t have travelled without a ticket, but Manchester is close to Glasgow, and cheap to get to, so many decided the party was going to be there with or without a seat at Eastlands.
Truth is, they could have been put off.
Manchester could have essentially rejected the £25m it’s said to have made from all those fans and said it was going to uphold its strict anti street-drinking laws, and not put up big screens. Drinkless and gameless, many fans wouldn’t have bothered.
Glasgow - and Rangers - could have done more to create a party at home, including issing tickets - not first-come-first-served - for the beamback to Ibrox, persuading thousands more the party could reliably be had in Glasgow, among friends and near home.
And Uefa - which now behaves as if it only wants fans as a backdrop for its telecast - could have done more to control ticketing, and kill any hopes of scoring a seat in Manchester itself on the day of the game.
I’ll admit that this final thought leaves me open to charges of hypocracy, because I got a ticket for the mixed zone - originally sold to the Russian FA - on the third party market that is supposed not to exist - although I bought the ticket before heading to Manchester.
But what the hell. If Uefa genuinely wanted to kill off the black market in tickets they’d end the daftness that is those “neutral” ticket allocations, which are sold long before the teams contesting the finals are decided.
Instead, they’d keep a small number for sponsors - as they do now - and divvy the rest between fans of the two finalists. That would reduce to two weeks the time for the black market to emerge and - most importantly - reduce the size of the black market by making sure tickets go straight to fans who really, really want to be there. The market would still exist, but those who didn’t get a ticket by the day before the final would be far more likely to think theirs a lost cause, and stay at home.
Those thugs’ actions last night were unforgivable, and brought shame on the club, and to Scotland’s reputation for well-behaved support. But by persuading more of those without tickets to stay at home, the authorities could have reduced the potential for trouble, and eased the burden on emergency services.
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