Arsenal America

Okay, I’ve decided to write about some of our exploits over the last 30 years of following The Arsenal home and away. In no particular order I’ll start with San Siro in 1995 for the second leg of the European Super Cup Final.

About 20 of us decided to make a day trip to Milan and met up in the Alex in Finchley, North London about 3.00am. Some people hadn’t left the pub from the day before. Two pints of Tetleys for breakfast. Lovely.

The guv?nor organised trips to Europe for Arsenal fans that wanted to have a laugh, drink and a bit of local action without the boredom of going on an official Travel Club trip. He also arranged for tickets. (Seating was behind the director?s box).

We got on the coaches and arrived at Gatwick about 5.30am and joined the other 450 nutters on the two flights he?d arranged. We got to Milan airport about 11.00 the local plod didn?t know what was going on. We drove into central Milan and were dropped off at three different restaurants. All pre-paid.

We soon found out that we could drink as much local wine as we wanted, but beer had to be paid for. The bill was calculated by how many empty bottles were on the table! No surprise that a bunch of Italian muppets found their table stacked high with beers as we left to find another bar.

We broke away from the main firm and found a bar not far from the restaurant. Here we managed to drink all afternoon and only paid for one round of drinks. The way it worked was you ordered and paid for the drinks at one area of the bar and then handed the receipt to the barman to make up. He then placed the receipts in a bowl on the bar. Obviously, that?s where we got our never ending supply. We just handed over a receipt, picked up our drinks and a handful of receipts from the bowl. Happy days.

Well we staggered from bar to bar, singing as we went until we got nearer the stadium where we met up with the rest of the boys from our planes. We waved at the Travel Club mugs that were driven straight from the airport to the ground and had paid ?50 more than us for the trip.

The San Siro at night is an amazing sight. It stands like a giant UFO when lit up. Five years earlier it had an extra tier added for the World Cup. The stand we were in had five tiers and we had the run of the place.

We marched to the ground and were confronted by some locals who thought we?d be easy pickings. They soon backed off when faced with some English fighting spirit. We saw one of their tanks over there apparently it?s got six gears. Five of them in reverse.

We had great seats and moved about freely. The crowd was only 23,000 but 4,000 of that was Arsenal. We took a walk up to the Milan end to throw some abuse. They didn?t want to know. They never said a word during the first half, but the second was different. I found out later that they remained silent in the first half as a mark of respect to the Sampdoria fan they?d killed the week before.

Anyway, the game was crap, we lost 2-0 and just wanted to get home as the drink was beginning to hit hard. But plod didn?t want us to leave and tried to baton charge us all. We had about 200 in that block. Anyway they saw the error of their ways and realised we would not back down so let us spill into the streets.

There were some minor skirmishes on the way back to the coaches but nothing to worry about.

We slept all the way home on the plane, on the coach and then hit the pub and started again. Happy days.