Getting ready for Football Tourism Again
Is it really a third of a decade since the last time I was outside Australia?
Indeed it is. I visited Portugal for the Nations League finals in June 2019. I spent a week in the wonderful northern city of Porto, watching three games and using that minor football tournament as an excuse to do some touring around, as I love to do. Three games: England versus Holland and Switzerland, and the final between Portugal and Holland were the foundation around which I was able to weave a lovely little circular tour: north into Spain, to Vigo, Santiago, La Coruna, Valliadolid and Zamora, before closing the loop by returning to Portugal and traveling down the Duoro river back to the coastal city.
Wonderful.
Then, of course, we had the COVID pandemic and all my plans to tour Europe during the 2020 continental championship had to be cancelled. When the tournament was rescheduled for 2021, travel arrangements were just too unreliable to risk going.
The bottom line is it was 1,230 days since I last left Australia. That's the longest period spent in one country since my first 13 years on the planet before my travel abroad, a school skiing trip to Austria.
So I’m looking forward to returning to combining a love of
football with a love of travel.
Because Qatar will host this year’s World Cup, the usual searing
summer temperatures associated with the gulf states led to it being rescheduled
to an unprecedented November/December slot. This caused massive disruption to
European leagues, such as England which started it’s season earlier and includes
a break for about two months to give top players time to represent their
countries there.
For me personally, this turned out to be a good thing
because it meant I could spend some time watching league football in England,
which is lucky as my team, Nottingham Forest, just happened to have won
promotion back to the top flight for the first time in over twenty years.
Thanks to Arsenal Steve, a mate of my old uni mucker, Jake Holloway, I managed
to get a seat to watch top of the table Arsenal play the Original Reds on the
second day of my trip. Forest are bottom but we go into the match with a least
a bit more confidence having beaten Liverpool last weekend.
It'll be especially exciting for me as I’ve never been to
the Emirates before. I’d ben to their previous famous ground Highbury a few
times but as with many other English clubs over the last twenty or so years,
they’ve moved to a brand new stadium. This then, provides another motivation
for this trip: to try to catch up with a few grounds that I’ve “lost” since I
went to Sunderland’s “Stadium of Light” in 2000 to complete the full 92. It’s not
just new grounds, either. Lots of clubs have fallen out of the league, and been
replaced by others with grounds I’d never been to as well.
Anyway, since emigrating to Australia, my ground count has slipped from 92 to 64. I hope to add four back onto that list before I leave.
The second goal of my trip is to visit Ukraine. Since 24th
February I’ve been on an obsessive emotional roller coaster following the
latest news from Putin’s genocidal invasion. One day it’s good news as Ukraine
seem to be pushing the invaders back, but the next it’s bad as some further
atrocity is reported or some leading westerner shows weakness in their response
if not open support for Russia. Knowing I was going to be in Europe with a
couple of weeks between the suspension of football in England and the start of
the World Cup in Qatar, I had to include a few days there, just to show my love
and support.
After Ukraine I plan to tour around the Balkan region to
visit Albania and maybe one or two other new countries, as I’ve also lapsed in
that score because of the COVID pandemic. The World Cup is an international
celebration so it always seems right and proper to eath the games in as many
countries as possible. Greece, Albania, Italy and Malta are on my agenda there.
Then, it’s back to London to watch the end of the group
stages before flying back to Qatar for three days and my one match, a round of
16 game at the Lusail Stadium which will host the final.
Then, it’ll be back to Oz to watch the pointy end of the
tournament in the Casino.
So much for the preamble.
The trip begins
My adventure started back in Perth, going to the airport on the brand new rail link from the city to the airport for the first time. That went very smoothly.
QR901 to Doha left Perth at 11pm on Thursday night, 27th October. It was great to fly again and arriving at Doha airport provided a timely reminder about the excuse for the whole trip. They were clearly geared up for the World Cup and the huge atria were decked out with the usual mega promotions you come to expect.
Doha airport always strikes as sick with opulence. So many chic fashion shops, glitzy gold jewelry, and various posh shops seemingly taken from Oxford Street, including Hamley's toy shop. All this, but you have to queue up for ten minutes a cup of coffee.
The transfer was easy and the final flight to London was as smooth as it could have been.
Arriving at Heathrow, it did occur to me that it might take a long time to get through passport control, this being my first post-Brexit visit, but the truth is it was the quickest, simplest transfer I've ever had.
Ah... back in good ol' blighty.
It took 5 minutes to get my SIM card attached and then I was off to see mi ol' mucker, Jakey.
