Istanbul 2005: Through the eyes of the supporters - Phil Blundell

I was 18 in May 2005, it was the month I was doing my A Levels. Important. University in the following September and it was imperative I got what I needed to get onto the course I'd applied for.

In around the April, I'd decided to re-sit some of my AS Levels to try and improve my marks. Every little helps, as that supermarket says…

Being the positive type, I had decided that Istanbul was our destiny sometime in the previous October, so I'd been planning for the eventuality for a long time in my head but when it got closer there were discussions with my parents beginning. I reckon the first one was after Juventus, around two days after I'd received the dates for my re-sits.

May 25, 1.30pm Maths.

Uh oh.

May 26, 9am Biology for PE.

Workable. Difficult but workable.

You're 18 and there's a European Cup final on the horizon, what to do? Well you behave like an irritating teenager don't you?

'Nope, not happening. It doesn't matter, I'll just do better on the other ones that I can get 90 marks on as opposed to the one I can only get about 30 on. It'll be fine.'

Somehow it managed to work and then Chelsea happened. We were going to Istanbul. My dad wasn't keen on going for the day but we had to be in Liverpool no later than 7am so it was going to be awkward.

One of the 50 million different varieties of day trips that were offered was perfect, leave Liverpool at 4pm on Tuesday, leave Istanbul at 4am after the match. Straight away it was booked. All done.

We got to Istanbul about midnight in the end and had a quiet night. Wednesday, we did the tourist things and had a 4pm leave for the Ataturk. My favourite tourist part was when a taxi driver decided he'd drive us the wrong way down a one-way street while managing to open my door because he didn't think it was closed properly.

4pm came and it was off to the ground. Six hours before kick-off should have been ample time to see the fan park and find my mates. It was before the days of smart phones and the like so we took it all on trust that the ground would be close, there'd be things around there and it'd be easy to get to.

Well it wasn't. It was basically on the moon and there was one road there from the middle of Istanbul (I went back last year to Beskitas and it was still two hours from town…). Getting there was carnage. People were hanging out of taxis, locals were selling beer on street corners, traffic was like the M6 on a bank holiday.

I reckon it took two hours from seeing the ground to getting off the bus. And even then we had to walk for another 40 minutes across a landscape that featured actual mountain goats. Still, European Cup final on the moon and that. Quite an experience.

Eventually we got in the ground and given we could have got back to Liverpool in roughly the time it had taken to get to the Ataturk, I was a bit hungry. I went to a food stand and found that a Liverpool supporter had jumped the counter and was flipping burgers much to the annoyance of the vendor… His looked better, though.

Anyway, after what felt like an eternity the game started. I won't do a match review or anything but Liverpool won dramatically, if you didn't know, and it was really good. And it was cold and anyone who wore shorts was mental.

At some point after Tina Turner had finished warbling we made our way to the coach. Still no idea how we found it, to be honest, but we did and airport-bound we went.

The airport was chaos but we thankfully managed to miss all of this and be the first plane that left Istanbul bound for Liverpool. I got about two hours' sleep and woke up as we landed.

First person through security and into arrivals at Liverpool airport at about 6.17am? Me. Did the 9am exam, didn't do very well, got to university. All worked out well in the end.

As it goes, even if I'd got 100 per cent I wouldn't have moved up a grade. I should have stayed in Istanbul a bit longer really…

For more from John, Gareth, Phil and Chris, visit The Anfield Wrap.