MY GUIDEBOOK: Nude post-match press conferences: the norm in Belgium

Dan Goldstein
Saturday 20 September 1997 18:02 EDT
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BEST FOOTBALL CITY

Okay, so none of the city's teams has won a European honour since 1964. But Lisbon is still football-crazy and to sit in any of the city's four huge old grounds (Benfica, Sporting, Belenenses or the national stadium at Caxias) is to step back into an earlier, more romantic footballing age. No hype, no merchandising, no scoreboard replays - just a bag of chestnuts and the beautiful game, played with invention, and watched with an air of healthy, knowing scepticism.

WORST FOOTBALL CITY

By a strange set of coincidences, I found myself changing planes at Amsterdam's Schipol airport on the night Ajax were defending their European Cup against Juventus of Italy. The two hours I had between flights corresponded almost exactly with the timing of the match, but not a single bar in the place had a television showing the game. I eventually found one in duty-free. Ajax are a great team and Amsterdam is a great city - but somehow the two just don't belong to each other.

BEST STADIUM

Few football venues are as magical as Poljud in the Adriatic port of Split, Croatia. I got there on the coastal ferry that links the city with a string of Dalmatian islands. At each sun-kissed stop, more fans of the local club, Hajduk, spilled onto the boat, flags waving, voices singing. I found myself wondering how they would all get home after the match. Hajduk hit five that night, and the beach party went on until dawn - there was no return boat until the morning.

WORST STADIUM

Though it is magnificent to look at and steeped in history, Milan's Giuseppe Meazza stadium, commonly known as the San Siro, is no place to watch a game of football. You'd get a better view from a helicopter than from the third tier which is often the only place with spare seats. Somewhere down below, 22 men are struggling to string two passes together on a pitch that hasn't seen enough sun since the San Siro's roof extensions were built for the 1990 World Cup. If you want to watch Inter or AC Milan at their best, watch them play away from home.

BEST FOOTBALL BAR

Every great European football city has its share of unmissable bars, but my favourite is 100 miles from the nearest stadium of any size, on the beach at Conil de la Frontera, southern Spain. Here nestles Francisco's, a sea-salty bar/restaurant that serves draught sherry from the barrel. Francisco himself seldom watches the inevitable telly, preferring to gaze at his collection of 200 football pennants, lovingly encased in glass and including - don't ask me why or how - every club from the former East German Oberliga. When you've finished marvelling at the Communist-era badging of Lokomotiv Leipzig and Energie Cottbus, you can take your manzanilla on to the terrace and watch the sun go down behind the mountains of Morocco, just across the water.

WORST FOOTBALL BAR

The nameless bar opposite CSKA Sofia's stadium has neon signs promising Carlsberg and Coca-Cola. "Two beers, please," I offer in my best phrasebook Bulgarian. "No beer," smiles the waitress. "Oh, two Cokes then," I venture. "No Coke." The midday sun is beating down ever more insistently. "Do you have anything to drink at all?" "Only sok", comes the reply. "A pair of soks it is, then." Sok, alas, turns out to be heavily diluted orange squash with copious amounts of added sugar - just to make sure you have no chance of quenching your thirst. Only costs four pence a throw, though.

BIZARRE MEETING

After watching Club Bruges on a rainy night in Flanders, I was taken down to the dressing room and introduced to Paul Okon, the team's promising Australian defender. He, like his team-mates, was just coming out of the shower, but didn't seem to mind being interviewed while splashing on the body spray. Nude post-match press conferences seem to be the norm in Belgium - where, presumably, Sony do a brisk trade selling waterproof tape recorders to sports journalists.

8 Dan Goldstein designed and edited The Rough Guide to European Football. In his spare time he is also editor of the monthly magazine Football Europe.

8 Fan Fare Events (Tel 0161 945 7800) organises football city breaks to Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland and Portugal. You can, of course, always organise flights and accommodation yourself, but remember that at the bigger venues (Barcelona, Milan, Munich and so on), matches can be sold out well in advance. The best advice to anyone thinking of just turning up at these places without a ticket is - don't.

For a more relaxed football break, take the Eurostar train from Waterloo International and a whole host of top-flight European clubs are suddenly within easy reach. Among them are: Paris Saint-Germain, Racing Lens and FC Metz (France); Club Bruges, Anderlecht, Royal Antwerp (Belgium); Feyenoord and Ajax (The Netherlands ); and Cologne, Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Monchengladbach (Germany).

If you can't get out to see some European football, let it come to you. The Rough Guide to European Football lists scores of informative Internet sites, but perhaps the best is the Italian-based Retel at: www.tin.it/rete/. The signposting is in English, the coverage continent-wide.

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