World Cup Diary – Day 16

I staggered to bed at 1am the previous night and had the worse night sleep in the last 2 and half weeks . The reason being I went to bed with responsibility again knowing I had to be up on time to catch a coach to Rio, then fly back to London in time to go straight back to work starting at Glastonbury Festival. People were relying on me.

I made it to the coach station in good time with Liam, Dave and Bill in tow, they had decided to head to Rio early with me and soak up a little extra time on the Copacabana before they fly home in a weeks time. I had agreed to let Liam have my France Vs Ecuador ticket as he had only seen 2 games so far while the rest of us had seen 4. However sadly there was no more seats available on my coach so they had to settle for the 11am coach to Rio and thus missed the game.
I said my goodbyes and started my final journey solo.
I was knackered, hungover and weary and spent most of the 8 hour journey catching up on sleep.
I woke with a hour to go as we entered the city and pondered how I would get to the airport.
It was at this point I realised I had booked a flight months ago from Belo Horizonte to Rio that I’d forgotten about and would of seen me at the airport I needed to be at without the need for a transfer from the coach station and of taken 2 hours instead of 8. I only booked this coach a week ago in time to make the France game.
Never mind, there had to be only cock up on the trip .
The coach arrived into Rio at about 3pm and I arrived at Rio international Airport for 3:45pm.
A part of me had the urge to leave my baggage in left luggage and head to the Maracana for the 5pm kick off but in mind my trip was over and I just wanted to get home.

I came across a TAM airways desk and managed to refund some of my future flights I’d booked in case we made it to the latter stages. A small financial compensation even if is going to take 40 days to refund me.

I was expecting Rio airport to be vast with plenty to do and good shopping but it was sparse and terrible. I managed to find for a final time a all you can eaten buffet and filled my plate while watching the France vs Ecuador game. To my relief it ended a forgettable 0-0.

Im writing this a few weeks after coming home and the remaining games I had tickets for Germany Vs Algeria and Argentina v Belgium and apart from a vibrant extra time period in the Germany game both seemed uneventful games and far from the World Cup classics I had hoped for.

Maybe i made the right decision after all.

Eventually it was time to check in on my flight. I took one last look at Brazil from curb side at the taxi rank. The lights of the favelas twinkled in the darkness and I breathed in the humidity in the air. A fella came up to me and kept asking to shine my shoes, I was wearing trainers but he kept insisting he would scrub them, despite telling him to do one he wouldn’t leave me alone and thus ruining my moment. I headed to the departure lounge in a huff.

The overnight flight to London was more pleasant than I was expecting, whilst booking I paid a extra $50 with British Airways for an economy comfort seat and it was well worth it.

Managed to get about 6 hours kip and the flight went quickly. Bleary eyed I landed at Heathrow and this image made me realise my adventure was over and real life dawned on me.

No doubt the best 2 and a half weeks of my life, the most fun i’ve ever had meeting some great people along the way.
A dream holiday you could say in a hot country with beautiful women which revolved around football. Roll on France 2016, I’m hooked.

World Cup Diary – Day 15

Its my penultimate day in Brazil and England’s final group game and subsequently our last participation in this World Cup, I was determined to have a good time in a last day of the season kind of way.

I was up at 8am for breakfast then headed over to Kai and Sarah’s hotel for a few pre match beers while we waited for their tickets to arrive from Viagogo. We were joined by Simon and Delaney who’d caught a overnight coach from Rio. Our full Manaus gang was back together, it was set to be a great day.
Come 11:30am and with just 90 minutes till kick off Kai’s tickets still hadn’t arrived and things were beginning to get frantic. It took me a while to get to the ground for the Argentina game and 11:30am was my cut off point to make a move.
As a group we decided to do it and jumped in two taxis hoping to pick up 2 tickets for Kai and Sarah outside the ground.

We arrived at the ground at 12:30 and needn’t have worried, Kai picked up a pair off the same scousers he had sold his extra Uruguay ones to a week ago so they gave him a good deal.

We marched up the long road to the ground through various security and ticket checks and made it in the ground just in time for the anthems. It was a glorious hot day close to 29oC and the England supporters section was basking in direct sunlight.

As we arrived late and with England’s ‘stand where you like’ attitude we found ourselves in the gantry between the lower and upper tiers. There was some locals stood in front of us on the back row of the lower tier looking very confused with this.
It was a real party atmosphere , I was worried they’re might of been some empty seats with rumours of people flying home or staying in Rio or maybe boos and attacks on the team but this was far from the case. “Always look on the bright side of life” rang out from our fans who once again didn’t stop singing all game.
The game was a bit of a dead water, Daniel Sturridge had a poor one and missed a handful of chances that would of clawed back some pride to sing about but we didn’t need any , all the fans were in great spirits, lads we bumped into throughout the trip were present and it was good to see them and find out their plans for the rest of the tournament.

As the game drew closer to a dire stale mate the England fans attentions switched to winding up the neutral Brazilians who grew more and more annoyed at our continued laughable boycott of their attempts at a Mexican wave, then as the team came close to a goal at our end causing a pint pot going skyward covering a section of Brazilian fans sat down just a few yards away from me, the death stares a dozen of them gave us was comical and it was only a matter of time before another pint got thrown in their direction. They were’t restrained the 2nd time and about 6 of them charged up the seats in our direction. Just as it looked to be getting a bit nasty the Brazilian Militaria stormed in and its surprising how quickly things calm down when there’s dozens of tear gas rifles being pointed in your face.

The final whistle blew on the game and also signalling the end of our World Cup.
Personally I was looking forward to giving the team a good ovation to send them home, I’d appreciated their efforts in trying to play a different style of football than that we’ve had to put up with in South Africa and the Ukraine. Although it got us through to the latter stages it was dull and uninspiring, a park the bus mentality if you will.
Here in Brazil the team had tried to create chances, no more so than in the Italy game where we really could of won and the whole campaign might of been different.
It boiled down to us not being good enough , tactically and playing as a team, not to mention key players having poor tournaments.
However I feel this is a real stepping stone to better performances in the future and French and Russian tournaments look a bit more rosy.

The previous two games had seen the players (Joe Hart an exception) skulk off with not a lot appreciation to the travelling support, which hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Today was different , led by Steven Gerrard and Roy Hodgson the whole squad came over to our corner and applauded us for what could of been a full 5 minutes while we rousingly sang our appreciation. “LA LA LA LAAAA ENGLAND” to the tune of The Beatles – Hey Jude”

Looking back on this trip, I’ll never forget that moment, it was truly heart warming.
We filed out the ground and managed to breakout the cordon into a local bar i’d discovered after the Argentina / Iran game. It was here over a few Brahmas we learnt of Luis Saurez’s actions in other game of the afternoon. I felt a rather selfish satisfaction knowing he’d surely get banned and miss the rest of the tournament.

Once the crowds had died down we wondered down to the nearest main road and managed to grab a taxi back into Belo Horizonte.
We spent the evening in Kai’s hotel bar, drinking are last Caiprihinias and consuming all the local produce we had left . I’d made some great friends on this trip, so much so that I spent more time with these guys than the original mates that I came out to meet in Sao Paulo.
We made plans for a holiday and also for the Switzerland game , the first of the Euro 2016 qualifiers.

World Cup Diary – Day 10

Match day. I feel the worse I have all trip, strong partying last night and probably the highest consumption to date of Caipiroskais’s is to blame, well at least I’m getting my 5 a day.
We headed down to the ground quite early, the ground by all accounts is awful to get to, it took 40 minutes by metro and once we arrived there was swarms of fans in a congested narrow areas, everywhere you looked people we needing tickets. We made are way through the crowds and found a mini fan park to watch the Columbia/Ivory Coast game, after a fair few Braham’s I’d finally felt normal again and excitement was reaching fever pitch.

The walk up to the ground was more like a shuffle thanks to the poor access to the newly built, half finished stadium and we finally arrived at the ground a hour before kick off, the stadium , despite being vast and visually impressive was actually quite embarrassing once you scratch the surface, the 2 stands behind the goal looked more like scaffolding or a temporarily stand you’d see at a cricket ground, too few toilets, the concourse’s we’re shaped with polystyrene to hide the no doubt bare concrete structure and no doubt building site behind it. At least getting a beer was easy thanks the dozens of vendors scattered around.

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The atmosphere in the game was brilliant again and like in Manaus standing room only in the England section behind the goal, we did everything we could to get behind the team but the same spark and ability to create goal scorers chances that was a positive from the Italy game seemed to dessert us in this one and of course it was in the script for Luis Suarez to score and more a less send us home.

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Mass despair amongst the England Fans in my section, we did seem to play well in spells of the game but it wasn’t enough compared to a World Class striker who may get 3 chances all game but still score two of them.
Before our goal both Rooney and Sturridge had clear cut opportunities that we really need to be taking at this level and then the outcome may have been very different.

I think a major factor is the players are playing with fear, from the press, from the nation. They fear the potential ridicule that Beckham and Rooney have received coming home from tournaments in recent years. Where as nation’s like Costa Rica who as I’m writing this have just beaten 4 times world champions Italy to seal our fate play with no fear , with players like Bryan Ruiz a failed career at Fulham behind has scored the goal to take his modest nation to the last 16 compared to our lot of premier league winners and champions league level players.

As reality set in it dawned on me that it might be quite hostile outside the ground so I made sure I left the ground with renown 2 Sheffield United lads I had met in Manaus, no ones going to mess with The Blades I thought, though someone would be brave enough to pick pocket one of their wallets and phones in the crush to get back to the station.
Though other than that there was no trouble that I came across or saw and the journey back to hotels wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. The Uruguayans were actually quite respectful in their victory and there was no goading of us like the Italiazilans did in Manaus.

Once back in town I enjoyed a fair few drinks in reasonable spirits with the Sheffield lads and eventually had a relatively early night turning in at 1am.

World Cup Diary – Day 7

After waking up from the best night’s sleep of the tournament so far, I was feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day.
Bill and Dave who Im staying with for the rest of the trip were trying to persuade me the previous evening to get up at 6am and catch a 6 hour coach to Curitiba to watch the Iran vs Nigeria game.
The amount of travelling I’ve done in the past week I couldn’t quite face any more at the moment for a lesser glamorous fixture so decided to leave them to it, now after seeing the result I’m fairly happy with my choice though they’re still yet to return, I’m hearing they had a great time.
So myself and Liam stayed in Sao Paulo and decided to head out around 11am and find a bar for some lunch and to watch the games.
As soon as we stepped out our hotel we met a couple of other England fans who had just flown in the previous night and went with them to pick up their match tickets, 2 lads from Carlisle who we ended up drinking with for the rest of the day.

Sao Paulo was like New York compared to Manaus, there’s fair few areas marked as no go zones and the advice is to stay around the Paulista/Jardins area.
With this in mind its proving difficult to find bars to congregate like we did in the Teatro Square in Manaus.
We settled for a cafe and watched the thoroughly enjoyable Germany Vs Portugal game, I was pleased with the result as I want Germany to top the group as I have a last 16 ticket to potentially see them in Porto Alegre.
After the game we regrouped back at the hotel as I had forgot to take my malaria pill in the morning then headed back out, we were in two minds weather to go to the fan fest but decided to stay local and eventually did find a decent sports bar to watch the remaining two games in.
Simon who I spent a lot of time with in Manaus had arrived as we a pieced together a good squad to watch the games.
We ended up not moving from that bar for the rest of the night, running up a decent bar bill, but it was a enjoyable evening match with a very entertaining USA v Ghana game.
At around 11pm Kai had also arrived from Manaus and we reminisced of the previous game whilst building up the excitement for the Uruguay game in 3 days times.

A month to go – Brazil 2014

 

“We’re on the march with Hodgson’s army, we’ll all going to Brazil” we triumphantly sang walking down the Wembley steps on that joyous night back in October last year where a 2-0 win over Poland booked England’s place in this summer’s World Cup.

At the time it was only a pipe dream that I’d be following the team to South America but with some scrimping and saving along with an almost non existent social life for the last 6 months, its become a reality.

On the 9th of June I fly out to Lisbon then on to Brasilla changing in Sao Paulo and finally on to Manaus in plenty of time for England’s opening game against the Italy.

The last 2 weeks have been spent mostly getting over the side effects of Yellow Fever, Polio, Hepatitis and Typhoid , recommended vaccinations when visiting Amazonian .

Ticket’s have surprisingly been the easiest aspect to organize. I’ve got tickets to all 3 England game’s along with vouchers for the Last 16 and Quarter Final if we can progress.

I’ve also so far picked up tickets for the Last 16 game in Port Alegre and the Quarter Final in Brasillia, potentially Germany V Argentina.

Planning to keep this Blog very busy while I’m out there with tales, photos and even a video diary If I can persist with it for the whole trip.

Roy Hodgson is due to announce his provisional squad on May 12th, below is the final 22 I’d take.

Hart, Forster, Ruddy

Baines, Jones, Terry , Cahill, Flanagan, Jagielka, Johnson,

Gerrard, Barkley, Lampard, Milner, Lallana,Henderson, Oxlade Chamberlin, Sterling

Sturridge, Welbeck , Carroll, Rooney