Nations League Finals. 09/06/19

"It's the Amex on steroids"

Switzerland 0-0 England. Estádio D. Afonso Henriques
Sunday 09/06/19. 2pm.

Portugal 1-0 Netherlands. Estádio do Dragão.
Sunday 09/06/19. 7.45pm

When UEFA first announced the creation of the Nations League, many football fans were quick to pour scorn on the idea.

An international competition with promotion and relegation? Playing the same two opponents home and away in quick succession in the group stage? All for a trophy that looked like a giant Mr Whippy ice cream carved out of silver.

It all seemed so pointless. A needless addition forced into the international calendar in place of international friendlies. It wouldn’t be any better than the repetitive cycle of meaningless games with France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands that England went through every few years.

Well, how wrong can you be? As the inaugural Nations League came to a close in the stunning setting of Estádio do Dragão, even the most ardent sceptic towards the format had to admit that it’s been a roaring success.

The third-place playoff and the final were held on the same day, one in Guimarães and the other in Porto, two fantastic cities just over an hour away from each other in northern Portugal. With there being a near-four-hour gap between the first game finishing and the second game kicking off, that presented the tantalising prospect of doing both games. Challenge accepted.

TAP Air Portugal did their best to scupper those plans though. We had been due to fly from Gatwick to Porto on the Friday but due to radar problems, the flight was cancelled. No problem according to our friendly Portuguese carrier – they could still get us to Porto.

We’d just be flying a day later. Oh, and it would now be from Heathrow. And we would first have to go to Lisbon. Where we’d have to wait seven hours for another flight to Porto. Which would arrive at 11pm on Saturday night. Just the whole 24 hours later than originally planned.

That seemed like a worse deal than a no deal Brexit – and speaking of Brexit, now seems like a good time to thank Theresa May for delaying it happening for long enough so that we can attempt to claim compensation from TAP Air thanks to EU rule 261/2004. Losing that right wasn’t written on the side of a bus.

Super Bock and sandwiches in Lisbon Station - this wasn't part of the plan

Unfortunately, there was no other choice and so it was off to Heathrow for a night in a Premier Inn before that flight to Lisbon. Rather than hang around in Lisbon Airport for seven hours, we decided to make our own way to Porto via a three-hour train journey. This was turning into a lot of effort for a third placed playoff with Switzerland.

Wine with a view in the Guindalense Football Club Bar 

Turned out that Porto was worth all the effort that went into travelling there

Porto it turned out was worth the wait. It’s a beautiful city full of stunning architecture and the first bar we stumbled across while exploring had views as good as any I’ve ever visited. It was called Guindalense and was perched precariously above the Douro river, right next to the Luís I Bridge. With the sun setting, the lights of the city starting to shine and a good bottle of red wine costing €4, it was the perfect place to relax after such an eventful journey.

Porto. Plenty of hills

The city itself is famous for its wine and we certainly got through a lot of it - along with the mythical Super Bock which must be one of the best beers in the world. Porto is also famous for the Francesinha, which is pretty much a heart attack waiting to happen in meal form. This local delicacy is a sandwich which contains ham, sausage and steak or beef. It’s topped off with a fried egg and melted cheese and then covered in a thick tomato and beer sauce. Great for the appetite, not so great for the life expectancy. Porto being a city of hills meant it was relatively easy to walk off however, or so I keep telling myself.

The famous Francesinha - aka a heart attack in a meal

When in Rome - Katie shows her support for super Super Bock

That was Saturday night and on Sunday it was game day. Special trains had been laid on from the historic São Bento railway station to Guimarães, a city of 158,000 people an hour and 10 minutes to the north where the Portuguese nation was born in 1128.

If you’ve read some of the more excitable members of the British press, then no doubt you’ll be expecting tales of a warzone. Thousands of English hooligans rampaging through the cobbled streets. The smell of tear gas and pepper spray lingering in the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site town centre. Locals scared for their lives, hiding indoors until the massed yobs had finished desecrating their homes.

England's vile supporters enjoy themselves with the locals in Guimarães

The Daily Telegraph’s Paul Hayward was certainly peddling that myth on Twitter. He described the experience of having England fans playing in their town as “scary” and “vile” for the people who live there.

One of his more dramatic tweets read: “I wouldn't be sorry to see England forfeit and go home, out of consideration for the people of Porto and Guimarães. Failing that, they should stop playing away games until the safety of local people can be guaranteed.”

That couldn’t have been further from our experiences of Portugal. Perhaps Paul should have visited the town square in Guimarães before the Switzerland game. He could have seen the locals who were merrily chatting to and taking photos with the supporters they were apparently running scared of.

Pre-match beers and wine. This would be very much needed given the
standard of football that was to come

He could have met the owner a of Pintado Fresco, a great little bar just off the main square which we chose for pre-game refreshment. Rather than worrying about his safety not being guaranteed, he was drinking with England fans and telling everyone that he was delighted that Gareth Southgate’s side had lost their Thursday night semi-final to the Netherlands. He actually wanted these vile people back in his town and back in his bar drinking €5 pints of Super Bock and €2 glasses of local sparkling white wine because they were such good fun.

That alcohol was much needed as the football wasn’t up to much. Guimarães’ Estádio D. Afonso Henriques was around a 10-minute walk from the city and was neat and tidy, a two tiered affair all the way around. It was a particular delight for us fans of floodlight pylons, with two large columns at the opposite end to the main England section having been built actually in front of the upper tier.

The home of Vitoria Guimarães

Switzerland v England prepares to kick off at Estádio D. Afonso Henriques

The person in front prays for a goal between Switzerland and England.
He wasn't to be answered

The game was played in front of a sparse crowd and you could tell that England’s players in particular were coming off the back of a long season. Neither side really created an opportunity in the first half aside from Harry Kane rattling the woodwork with a fine piece of improvisation.

It had the feel of a pre-season friendly about it, which pretty much confirmed our decision to bail and head back to Porto for the final – tickets for which were still available and only a few clicks away thanks to UEFA issuing them electronically via a special app.

A pretty sparse crowd - but check out those floodlight pylons

Having heard about the public transport nightmare that unfolded after the England - Netherlands game 72 hours previously - which had seen some fans stuck in Guimarães for up to five hours after the final whistle due to a lack of available trains - we left the England game after an hour in order to get back to Porto.

It turned out this wasn’t actually a sacrifice that needed to be made. Some supporters reported staying right the way up to final act of the penalty shootout - Jordan Pickford scoring and then saving to give England victory - and still managed to make the final as on this occasion the trains ran like clockwork.

Given the travel disasters we’d already experienced, that wasn’t a risk we wanted to take. Having also missed the spot kick success over Colombia at last summer’s World Cup in Russia, seeing England win on penalties will have to wait for another day.

The stunning Estádio do Dragão awaits Portugal v Switzerland

The Amex Stadium on steroids...

Estádio do Dragão couldn’t have been more different to Estádio D. Afonso Henriques if it tried. While the ground in Guimarães was a quaint little affair with a homely feel, the home of Porto was a bold and brash stadium which must be one of the most striking in the world.

As a Brighton and Hove Albion supporter, the best way to describe it is as the Amex on steroids. It has the same sweeping arches holding up the roof, but it’s twice the size of its cousin some 1,300 miles away in Sussex.

That roof floats over the vast stands behind each goal which have open backs, providing glorious views over Porto itself. If you are in the right seat in the stadium, you can watch the sun go down in the gap between terrace and roof. It’s a real marvel.

"Can I get a hotdog with, er, crisps on the top please?"

The concourse of Estádio do Dragão offers some pretty nice views over Porto

One of the other criticisms thrown at the Nations League when it was launched was would anybody care about it? Judging by the atmosphere inside Estádio do Dragão, the locals certainly did. Half of the stadium was a sea of red and green. Portugal are going through a golden period at the moment led by the irresistible Cristiano Ronaldo and their 1-0 win means they are now both European Champions and Nations League champions.

For once, it wasn’t Ronaldo who delivered their success on this night but Goncalo Guedes. It was much more entertaining than the earlier game – not that that is saying much – with both sides having chances throughout and the 43,199 in attendance seemed to enjoy themselves.

Ronaldo and company celebrate winning the Nations League

A large proportion of that crowd was made up of England fans who’d brought tickets hoping that it would be the Three Lions in the final. Even though it wasn’t, many turned up anyway. That led to the strange situation whereby an international final between Portugal and the Netherlands was played out to impromptu songs about Harry Maguire drinking vodka and jaeger and a backdrop of flags of St George.

Most of the English in attendance seemed to be siding with the Dutch but I was firmly in the neutral camp, just wanting a good game of football. In the end, that’s what we got. The streets of Porto were bedlam afterwards. Flags out of sunroofs, beeping horns, people singing and dancing. Further proof if it were needed that this new fangled Nations League does matter.

Sadly, we weren’t able to join the party. A 7am departure the following morning to Madrid meant an early night and an attempt to get a significant red wine stain off the wall. That’s one of the dangers that comes when the vino is so good that you leave a glass on your bedside table to drink during the night, only to end up spilling it everywhere in your sleep.

UEFA have already confirmed that the Nations League will return for the 2020-21 season. With Bosnia and Ukraine promoted into England’s League A, the prospect of trips to Sarajevo and Kiev is a very real possibility. It can’t come soon enough. What a tournament.

Third Place Playoff: Estádio D. Afonso Henriques, Guimarães  

Switzerland: Yann Sommer, Nico Elvedi, Fabian Schar, Manuel Akanji, Kevin Mbabu, Edimilson Fernandes (Denis Zakaria), Granit Xhaka, Remo Freuler, Ricardo Rodriquez (Josip Drmic), Xherdan Shaqiri (Steven Zuber), Haris Seferovic (Noah Okafor).


England: Jordan Pickford, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Harry Maguie, Joe Gomez, Danny Rose (Kyle Walker), Jesse Lingard (Jadon Sanco), Eric Dier, Fabian Delph (Ross Barkley), Dele Alli, Harry Kane (Callum Wilson), Raheem Sterling.

Attendance: 15,742



Final: Estádio do Dragão, Porto

Portugal: Rui Patricio, Nelson Cabral Semedo, Jose Fonte, Ruben Alves Dias, Raphael Guerreiro, Bruno Fernandes (Joao Moutinho), Danilo Pereira, William Carvalho (Ruben Neves), Bernardo Silva, Cristiano Ronaldo, Goncalo Guedes 1 (Rafa Silva).


Netherlands: Jasper Cillessen, Denzel Dumfries, Matthijs de Ligt, Virgil van Dijk, Daley Blind, Marten de Roon (Luuk de Jong), Georginio Wijnaldum, Steven Bergwijn (Donny van de Beek), Memphis Depay, Ryan Babel (Quincy Promes).


Attendance: 43,199

Switzerland v England. 08/09/14

"You know who Fernando Alonso is? €100 if you can get me to Central Station quicker than he could. 20 minutes."

Switzerland 0-2 England. St Jakobs Park..
Monday 08/09/14.

For a country that never enters wars and for whom excitement is the birth of a new calf on a hill somewhere, trips to Switzerland always seem to be eventful and they always seem to involve what is more commonly known in the trade as a travel cock up.

England last played there in 2010, when the French were striking over something - I suspect having to work more than twice a week - which meant a near fatal four hour delay in getting a train from Paris to Basel for the game. No such problems this time, we'll avoid France on the way there and avoid it in the main on the way home. Famous last words.

What should have been a nice, early flight from Gatwick to Milan and then a delightful train journey through the Alps from Italy to Switzerland descended into farce as the crew of the EasyJet flight decided to turn up late meaning an hour delay. Be ten seconds late for a flight and Sir Stelios is rubbing his hands with glee, turning you away for this disgusting lack of punctuality and forcing you onto a far more expensive flight for your troubles. So the irony and anger at this turn of events was understandable.

Italian lakes

This delay meant that from getting out of Milan's Malpensa airport, there was just 30 minutes to get to Central Station - a journey that according to the even the most optimistic timings would take at least 40 minutes. God bless the Italians then and their lack of care for speed limits. Having tracked down a taxi driver who looked suspiciously like Flavio Briatore, €100 was waved under his nose if he could drive like Ferrari hero Fernando Alonso and get to the station in 25 minutes. Whether it was the money, the encouragement to break the law and do 200kph at one point or the fact this ragged looking gent was inspired by the previous days grand prix at Monza a few miles up the road, he achieved his aim and after a sprint that Usain Bolt would have been proud of through the station the train to Basel was made with 30 seconds to spare.

High on a hill sits a lonely goat

The end of the travel problems? Don't be silly, but more on that later. The train journey took five hours but it was a spectacular one. Criminally, this was my first ever visit to Italy and what a stunning place. We wound our way past lakes overlooked by massive hills, through forests, mountainsides with little houses and huts scattered all over them that made you want to burst into a Julie Andrews number. It was tempting to send a tweet to Taylor Swift comparing the beauty of it all to her, but then again that may have been the cans of Eickhoff talking.

Steinenvorstadat

Swiss fan complete with cow bell

Basel was eventually reached with the England fans gathering pre-game in Steinenvorstadt. This long, pedestrianised street had everything you need for drinking in Switzerland - a Spar where cans of Quollfrish were £1.50 as opposed to the £12 (TWELVE) a pint in a pub and plenty of places to hang flags. A good old fashioned sing song erupted, the police posed for photos, Swiss fans wandered past with cow bells and cheese and Toblerone themed hats. As you do.

This bloke had seen better days...

St Jakobs Park is a short tram ride away and from the outside you could be mistaken for thinking you'd turned up at Nelson Mandela House, Peckham rather than an international football ground. Once inside - which took half an hour due to hundreds of England fans trying to cram in through four turnstiles prior to kick off - there was little danger of seeing Del Boy and Rodney.

Nelson Mandela House, Basel

England were housed in two tiers in a corner behind the goal, exactly the same place as on our last visit. There did seem to be less this time around which, given the drop off in performances recently and the much publicised and sung about decision to award just one loyalty cap for away games as opposed to two for going to Wembley, was hardly surprising. Opposite the away end is a similar stand and down both sides two large, three tiered stands. It's a funny old ground but one that works and I'd love to get back for an FC Basel game at some point.

"2 caps for Wembley, you're having a laugh"

Given the dirge served up against the powerhouse of football that is Norway five days earlier and the fact Switzerland had a decent World Cup, most England fans agreed that they'd Suarez your arm off for a draw before the game. The fact we won, playing decent attacking football led by Raheem Sterling and the brace scoring Danny Welbeck was particularly pleasing. It did owe more credit than appears to be given though to a great first half save at 0-0 from Joe Hart with his legs and then an excellent late clearance from Gary Cahill. Still, no complaints here - the extension of Euro 2016 to 24 teams meaning with that result in the bag it will take a cock up of the sort of size of Easyjet staff being late to mean we don't qualify.

GOAL

Post game and drinking in the street was obviously out of the question so that meant biting the bullet and paying the £8 (EIGHT) for a pint of Wadenswiller. Firstly that meant Bar Rio which unfortunately shut at 1am which neccesitated the move to Papa Joes. This was the second visit in succession I'd decided to sleep rough in Switzerland and Joes once again fully encouraged this scenario, allowing people to just doze off in their bar with none of the sort of hot headed treatment such behaviour can garner in England.

Stuntman shots = not a good idea

How do you know if you've had too many tequilas? Why, when it reaches 4am and you are sick of course, at which point it is time to retire to bed or in this case a bench in the main station. At 6am it was off to catch a train to Strasbourg from where Luxembourg and a flight home would be reached. Or so I thought...

This doesn't look like Luxembourg

Except of course, I'd got away with the first travel cock up and the Gods of the European rail system weren't going to be so kind a second time. No, this train was delayed thanks predictably to some French peasant,  arriving at Strasbourg 20 minutes late meaning a missed connection to Luxembourg City and as a result a trip to Paris. From there? A £200 ticket for the EuroStar to get back to England, a decent Parisian breakfast from a cafe that was surprisingly not shut due to a strike and a quick visit to the Eiffel Tower to try and find a woman to propose to.

How's that for a cock up? Thank Christ England won

Switzerland: Yann Sommer, Steve von Bergen, Stephan Lichtsteiner, Johan Djourou, Ricardo Rodriguez, Gokhan Inler, Xherdan Shaqiri, Granit Xhaka, Valon Behrami, Haris Seferovic, Admir Mehmedi (Josip Drmic).

England: Joe Hart, John Stones, Phil Jones, Gary Cahill, Leighton Baines, Jack Wilshere, Fabian Delph, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling, Danny Welbeck 2, Wayne Rooney (Rickie Lambert)

Attendance: 35,500

Switzerland v England. 07/09/10

"Sam, we've got to get up. This police officer is pointing a gun at us"

Switzerland 1-3 England. St Jakobs Park.
Tuesday 07/09/10.

Traveling on public transport in France is a task full of inherent risk. That risk comes from the communists and peasants who make up the French nation spending 90% of their working lives on strike and it was this cruel fate that so nearly ruined the journey to Basel for England's opening Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland.

In an attempt to save money, we decided to let the train take the strain, catching the Eurostar from St Pancras to Paris and then a TGV service from the French capital south to Basel, nicely nestled on Switzerland's borders with France and Germany.

Thanks to a typically French strike, we were able to use two
spare hours in Paris to find the Arc de Triomphe

Yet thanks to a number of work-shy Frogs, our booked train was cancelled meaning we had to catch one two hours later than planned and due to the strike, this train was utterly packed with standing room only. Standing next to a toilet in a small corridor is not the best way to spend a four hour journey, not even when you have a crate of Kronenbourg and are sharing the impossibly tiny space with a very beautiful woman. She unfortunately did not speak English. Either that or she pretended she couldn't to avoid talking to us, which in fairness is more likely and a pretty shrewd move.

Standing up next to a toilet for a four hour train journey.
At least we had some beer.

The one good thing about the strike is that it did give us enough time to wander off and see one of the sights of Paris, the Arc de Triomphe. It was a good six miles round trip which was plentiful exercise for a man of my statue.

Despite worries that it would be incredibly tight to make the game given the delay, TGV went a small way to redeeming their lazy workers by getting us to Basel with just over an hour until kick off. We stumbled across Papa Joe's which was what appeared to be a restaurant but was showing the sort of initiative that would get you a long way on Dragons Den by selling cans of beer from crates through it's windows.

Papa Joe's, Basel

Pre-game beers with some friendly Swiss

This was genius in two ways - they would make a lot of additional profit from the Swiss and England fans mingling outside and it also meant that we didn't have to pay the high price of a pint with cans of Feldschlosschen all around. It weighed in at a hearty 5.5% and led to a brilliant atmosphere at Joe's prior to the game, with the Swiss fans showing just why they haven't been involved in a war by being extremely friendly throughout.

Nelson Mandela House or St Jakob Park?

St Jakob Park with 4,000 England fans

St Jakob Park was a short tram journey from the old town area and from the outside resembled a block of flats in Peckham rather than an international football stadium. England had 4,000 tickets in a two tiered stand behind the goal and if you were stuck at the front, there was one massive issue - the rain that was absolutely hammering down. Now watching regular football at Withdean makes you used to getting drenched, but there was an underlying problem in this particular situation in that we were sleeping rough that night before traveling home the following day. Spending the next 24 hours in wet clothes would not be ideal, and so it proved with the dreaded man flu following a few days after getting back to Blighty.

The stand opposite to where we were based was identical to the away section and down both sides were three tiered efforts. The place was packed for the encounter and with their flags and noise, the Swiss were being anything but their normal neutral selfs. It quietened down after just ten minutes when Wayne Rooney scored on the pitch as opposed to in a pensioners bed to put England ahead with his first international goal in over a year and Adam Johnson made it 2-0 in the second half. The wonderfully named Xherdan Shaqiri scored an absolute screamer to give the home side hope but Darren Bent soon extinguished it for a 3-1 win. Six points out six after beating Bulgaria on Friday, job done.

Swiss flags galore

With the rain relenting after the game, we risked the walk back from Nelson Mandela House to the old town as the trams looked absolutely rammed. The name of the game when sleeping rough is to make as much use of bars and nightclubs as possible and we did just that by returning to Papa Joe's which now seemed to have morphed from a restaurant into a club by opening it's top floor as a pure drinking area. There were a number of England fans in here plainly taking the same approach as us with people asleep at tables and the staff of Joe's doing a fine job in just letting them get on with it. If you fall asleep in a pub in England - and I can talk from years of experiences of doing so - you are likely to get a severe talking to from a bouncer and maybe even a barring. But not in good old Basel.

Papa Joe's was more than happy for it's patrons to fall asleep

Sam get's into the spirit, dozing off mid pint

They do have some rules however and when one man was sick off a balcony onto the terrace below that was deemed to have quite rightly crossed a line. Having been up for approaching 24 hours at that point given our 3am departure from Sussex, that seemed as good a point as any to retire to bed - or in this case a set of steps that linked the central station to a car park.

The nights "accommodation" - a stairwell in the station

We only had an hour and a half worth of peace here before being woken up by the unusual sight of a police officer pointing a gun in our faces. This seemed to indicate we had to move on, namely to the main station for more sleep and then to a Starbucks where one small tea was purchased in exchange for another hours kip in a downstairs corner of the coffee chains outlet. Again, we were undisturbed. Try that in England and see what the results are.

FOG ON THE RHINE IS ALL MINE ALL MINE

Basel Cathedral

The rain was still pounding down at this point which meant a quick look at the Rhine and the cathedral was as far as the mornings sightseeing went before the train back to Paris and St Pancras. And do you know what? There wasn't one hitch on the return journey. Rooney scoring for England and the French doing a days work - the wonders simply never cease.

Switzerland: Diego Bengalio, Stephan Lichtsteiner, Steve von Bergen, Stephane Grichting, Reto Ziegler, Xavier Margairaz (Xherdan Shaqiri 1), Gokhan Inler, Pirmin Schwegler (Moreno Costanzo), David Degen (Marco Streller), Alexander Frei, Eren Derdiyok. 

England: Joe Hart, Glen Johnson, Phil Jagielka, Joleon Lescott, Ashley Cole, Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard, Theo Walcott (Adam Johnson 1), Wayne Rooney 1 (Shaun Wright-Phillips), James Milner, Jermaine Defoe (Darren Bent 1).

Attendance: 37,500