London one-way!

Still having troubles with my blasted email, but Wednesday night was a real corker when we headed over to Stamford Bridge to watch the Blues crush Olympiakos 3-0.

We just flowed with the rest of the crowds to the stadium, and walked easily into our West side lower seats, directly behind the boxes with a great view of the screen and aligned to the mid-field so we could see evenly down each side of the pitch.

Even better were the free flags we got in aid of the Championships, as Chelsea became the 8th English team in the finals. The Greeks were a storm of red in the shed, with their mighty scarf wielding and noisy roars, but they were deafened only six minutes in when Michael Ballack caught a bounce off Lampard and kicked the first goal for the night. Twenty-five minutes later the roles were reversed when Lampard scored off of Ballack’s ball.

I must say, our goal keeper was great – the usual guy was out with an injury but this one was in the right place at the right time all night. Chelsea actually tried for the goal 8 times, the first one was the most heart-wrenching after the ball bounced out of the goals, so we all sat down again in disappointment.

The third goal was an almighty whack to the Greeks, just minutes into the second half when Kalous, who had only just come on, kicked a good one right in there. Drogba was a real disappointment, he didn’t seem to run after the ball much, and let them slip more than he should have, even though he still manages to be in the games pics when congratulating others.

Joe Cole was my hero for the night, or at least for the first half because he was rested for the second. He really seemed to run hard at the ball, and did a few pretty cool ball tricks flinging it out of the way of the other team, and just playing as a real time member.

Whereas every time we saw the ‘other’ Cole, Lija was like ‘so is that the lying cheating scumbag who’s got the ball?’ ‘Yep’, I’d reply. How much of it is true that you believe in the gossip mags, but they are forever talking about how much he cheats on his wife, so whether fact or overcooked by the papaz, I don’t give a toss about his on-field play, he got a snarl from me each time I saw him.

We had a few moments of tense excitement, everyone was standing, so we stood. Everyone held their breath, more often than not, everyone exhaled an expletive, the most common was that the ref was paid off by the Greeks, because he did seem to give them a whole heap of penalties and advantages, though both teams got yellow-carded.

The extra time at the end of the game didn’t mean much as we had sliced and diced fairly soon on, although Olympiakos did nearly score in the last minutes, but like I said, our goalie was pretty awesome.

Getting out afterwards was the usual cattle prodding, moving with the crowd and tripping over or pummeling through anybody who dared to stop or get in the way. We squished ourselves onto a tube to Earl’s Court and changed for the Upminster, flying our flags the whole way.

Check out the latest pics here.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.