A European trip

Good morning.

Here’s a really quick blog for you because I’m heading back to Dublin this morning. Did I really need that extra Negroni before returning to the hotel? I don’t think so, but I blame Andrew Allen for that. I’m just a 54 year old person without any agency and an inability to say no. Especially when the one nightcap we were going to have turned into three and I definitely don’t remember saying “I’m going to have another one” … twice. It couldn’t be  me, as they say.

Earlier, we had found a bar to watch the Champions League action, plumping for the Barcelona v Atletico Madrid game rather than the PSG v Liverpool fixture. That was on in the Irish bar next door to the place we found. The place that will now be known as the Prodigy Bar. There’s a simple reason for this.

On the TV they had the football. On the sound system they had the Prodigy, but at the loudest volume the Prodigy has ever been. So, as 10 man Barcelona ran rings around Atleti, Diego Simeone’s brain must have been in outer space. It was, to be quite honest, a bit scary how good they were despite being a man down. If you had to guess, you’d have thought they were the ones with a man advantage. The technical level was actually ridiculous.

And yet, against the run of play with one player more, they had an attack down the left, a cross came in and Sorloth – a man who sounds like something you might get fed to in a Star Wars movie – doubled the lead they had taken in the first half. via Julian Alvarez’s brilliant free kick. Simeone’s movements on the sideline were perfectly in sync with ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, which was being played at 11 volume but someone had also turned it up to 12.

He was like a twisted animator, hey hey hey, and watching we decided that although a 2-0 lead isn’t game, set and match against this Barcelona side, we’d far prefer to play Atletico Madrid in a semi-final if we made it through against Sporting in the second leg. It’s a similar situation to us, winning the away leg gives you a decent platform for the next game, but I think – with all due respect to our Portuguese opposition – Atleti still have more work to do to qualify for the semi-finals.

In the other game, PSG beat Liverpool 2-0, and it’s worth just taking a moment to consider where we are if we do get through the next game against Sporting. It’ll be one of Barcelona or Atletico Madrid in our semi, and one of PSG, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid in the other one if the Mugsmashers don’t mount an epic comeback in their game. That’s the kind of company we’re keeping in European football these days, and I don’t think we should take it for granted considering where we were just a few years ago.

In all the prestigious years of this club’s existence, we’ve never made the semi-finals of the Champions League two years in a row. We have a real opportunity to do that, and as much as we demand a raising of standards, I don’t think it’s something we should just dismiss as the norm. We all want silverware, the big prizes on offer this season are almost like our white whale at this point, but progress isn’t only measured by trophies.

Anyway, we can take a moment to just breathe today. Tomorrow the focus will turn to Bournemouth on Saturday, and we can start to look forward to that one. Right, gotta head off, thanks to Lisbon and everyone I’ve spent time with here, it’s been a blast. Now, I’m gonna take my brain to another dimension. Or just have a shower and head the airport.

Works either way.

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