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LONDON—In
extravagant tension from Moscow, as the Chelsea stalwart
John Terry strode to take the clinching penalty kick on
giant TV screens, you could sense the pubs along the
winding
Fulham Road
poising to erupt.
The
steel-gutted Terry would make the kick, of course.
Chelsea of London would defeat fellow kingpin Manchester
United, 1-1 and 5-4 on penalties, to win the first
all-English final in the biggest soccer-club competition
in the world, the European Champions League. And when
this European night’s drama had settled, this road that
runs past Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium would become
maybe the place-to-be on the planet.
Horns
would blare. Strangers might hug. It all became almost
visible and audible as pub windows revealed
Chelsea
fans in blue, inhaling just before joy.
Just
then, though, an inconceivable twist happened some 1,559
miles to the east. In Russian rain, Terry missed. He
guessed correctly, aiming for the gaping half of the
goal while Manchester United goalkeeper Edwin Van der
Sar lunged rightward, but Terry slipped and shanked it
stunningly wide of the goal.
Moments
later, when Manchester United won, 6-5, on penalties
once Van der Sar stopped Nicolas Anelka’s try, the city
of Manchester 163 miles to the northwest became the
place-to-be, revealing again that sports is terribly
capricious and that the European Champions League can be
among the most thrillingly precarious competitions on
Earth.
And old
Fulham Road?
It
became mildly eerie, even given that Chelsea fans
probably rate among England’s poshest contingents. In an
instant, the whole stretch of road felt gutted.
A friend
warned that it might be good to clear out of the pub
area and head to an apartment just in case things got
ornery. A peeved man in fine office clothing started a
brief scrape of misdirected punches with a crowing
Manchester United fan.
Broken
bottles and glasses pockmarked some sidewalks. Within an
hour, rows of riot police had lined up outside the
Fulham Broadway subway station, and by midnight they had
clashed with a cluster of Chelsea fans. People showed
footage of the fracas on their mobile phones.
The
stadium, warded off with makeshift gates, looked a bit
forlorn in the dark.
In the
match that had riveted the country that’s the birthplace
of the world’s runaway No. 1 sport,
Chelsea had reached its first Champions League final and come
nightmarishly close to winning it.
Instead,
the club owned by Russian oil magnate Roman Abramovich
had proved secondary to Manchester United in Russia,
deepening a recent pattern. In both the 2006-07 and
2007-08 seasons, England’s Premier League finished with
Manchester United No. 1 in the standings and Chelsea No.
2, and now, as a good chunk of Earth watched by
television, that same order had held—barely—for the
oversized, continent-wide cup that is often as coveted
as the league title.
Rather
than Chelsea winning a first European title to reward
Abramovich’s profuse expenditures on players since he
took over the club in June 2003, Manchester United won a
third (and first since 1999) and a second for its
renowned 21-season manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. The
northwest club cemented its global image in a matchup
that cemented the English game as tops.
Ever
since the end of April, when the two English teams were
all that remained from the 32 Europe-wide clubs that
began the event last September, England had been waiting
for this Moscow night.
The
match would occur about as far from England as it could
be, and it would go against a surreal backdrop of recent
testiness between the two countries. Some fans scrambled
for tourist visas until Russia formally waived visa
requirements.
The big
night approached, hype reigned, the English media in
Moscow belittled the choppy pitch at Luzhniki Stadium,
and people mulled the strangely uncertain future of
Chelsea’s first-year manager, Avram Grant.
As it
got going, though, the subway here filled with Chelsea
fans as if a home match were imminent. Vendors along
Fulham Road
sold Chelsea goods. Pubs filled up so much that oxygen
became scarce indoors.
Pubs
felt like steam rooms. Cristiano Ronaldo scored on a
gorgeous header for Manchester United, and Frank Lampard
on a less-pretty garbage collection just before halftime
for
Chelsea,
and that 1-1 score held from halftime through 75
excruciating minutes plus added time.
By the
time Terry readied for his penalty kick, only one player
out of nine had missed, and that player would be Ronaldo,
only the best player in the Premier League for two years
running—a whopping 42 goals this dying season. But
something even more shocking ensued with Terry, and…
Pretty
soon, three guys in
Chelsea
attire embraced just inside the subway turnstiles. They
appeared to be holding each other up, as if their
bloodstreams might have contained the odd alcohol
product. One burbled something about next season. |
