Not many cities in the world are lucky enough to have two Champions League teams, a few miles apart, like Manchester. That means twice the away fans from all over Europe that travel to the North for a Champions League away day.
Charter flights filled to the brim from Liverpool to Toulouse in November. Ten coaches travelled down the A1 from Sunderland with Southampton as their final destination. A ferry departing Rotterdam bound for the port of Hull, full of Germans originating from Leipzig and travelling to Manchester. Three random and weird travel itineraries that the average person could not explain. Ask any football fan though and they will immediately tell you two words. Away days.
Away days are one of the most exciting and unique parts of football culture, it’s the time of the week that you get to travel cross-country or abroad to follow and shout for the team you have been supporting since you were a little kid. Thousands of fans every weekend travel on coaches across the UK from the Premier League down to the Non-Leagues. Why else would you see a coach full of people from Newcastle flipping off a coach full of people from Sunderland on the motorway?
Ask any fan what the best away days are and they will always tell you the ones that they travelled abroad. A trip to another country just for a football match is something any football fan should try in his life. The camaraderie between fans as they embark on a lengthy journey to an unknown place is truly a majestic sight as they march towards the stadium.
Some of those trips are engraved in history such as when 80.000 Celtic fans landed in Seville for the 2003 UEFA Cup final, the 100.000 Rangers fans that invaded the same Spanish city 15 years later for a Europa League final and the almost 60.000 fans that travelled to Paris from Liverpool for the Reds’ Champions League final in 2022. One of the most extreme away days of all time goes to River Plate and the 25.000 fans that made the trans-Pacific journey to Japan for the 2015 Club World Cup.
Etihad Stadium and Old Trafford are roughly four miles apart. Right in the middle of that distance is the Manchester city centre. It is extremely rare for a large European city such as Manchester to have two stadiums so close to their city centre. Football is engraved into that area. Of course, you have the National Football Museum, where you can see everything about the history of the sport from day one till the present.
However, even walking around the city centre on match days will get you a taste of some true football atmosphere. Imagine you are walking around Piccadilly Gardens on a cold Tuesday afternoon when suddenly you hear roars from a large group of people in the distance. It comes from a few hundred travelling away fans, crammed in the St. Peter’s Square Metrolink station trying to fit into a tram to Old Trafford. Impatiently sitting in the station, the only way to pass their time is to chant about their team and break the silence around the neighbouring streets.
Just before that, they were probably at Exchange Square, where they gathered from midday, drinking, chanting and just preparing mentally and physically for the big match up ahead.
For BSC Young Boys fans that place was Printworks, on a cold Tuesday of November, as more than 3000 fans travelled from Bern to cheer on the Swiss Champions.
Right at the back of loads of groups drinking beer and chatting about their chances against the defending champions Manchester City, we can see Roland and his son.
Probably in his mid-30s, he holds a pint on his left hand and his son’s small hand on the other. Roland’s son tries to fully comprehend what he sees, with his eyes fully wide open and his mouth slightly open.
“It’s like a small Bern neighbourhood and it feels very nice.”
“It’s nice to see other cities and support my team at the same time,” Roland said.
“I believe it is like an investment especially now with my son, it is good for him to see other places. I hope we will qualify for the next round and organize a trip with my wife and my son and make a holiday out of it.” Roland added.
Manchester is one of the most visited destinations for travelling fans as it plays host to two of the biggest football clubs in the world. Every weekend, coaches arrive from every corner of England for a Premier League match and almost every week thousands of fans land at the Manchester Airport for a Champions League match.
Over the years fans from Hoffenheim, Plzen, Tiraspol, Astana and Cluj-Napoca among others have made the long trip to the North of England due to football.
MM followed the Young Boys, RB Leipzig fans on their journey to Manchester as they faced Manchester City.
Outside Etihad’s South Stand where the away fans are allocated, Lukas and Anna walk hand in hand. They are now in their 60s, pensioners, wearing matching red and white scarves. They probably have lived through East Germany’s dark era, when Leipzig was just another industrial city. Now they have a world-class football club that boasts the city’s name on the biggest stage.
“This is our second time in Manchester, we came here last year, it is a nice city but the match for us was very bad last year and we hope it will be better this time around,” Lukas and Anna, a couple from Leipzig said before entering the stadium and witness a Man City comeback even though their team’s was ahead 0-2 at the end of the first half.
“We have been following the team since the beginning. It is great to have Leipzig playing in Europe nowadays. We try and travel with as much as possible, now that we are pensioners,” Lukas said as a red bus with “Holy Bulls” written on its side passed behind him.
It was one of the numerous coaches that departed Leipzig on Monday morning, boarded a ferry in Rotterdam the same night, arrived in Hull the next morning and drove the remaining three hours to Manchester.
Anna weighed in on that phenomenon and said: “In the beginning, we did some bus trips but now we only fly in. It is great because we get to see cities we wouldn’t probably travel to. We always come in the day before and stay for another one or two.”
Football is something unique. It is usual to see people who work hard every day, live quiet lives and transform into crazy loud angry fans every Sunday for their team in the stands. There are some feelings that you can only feel in the tribunes. Football can be the reason to cancel dates, form friendships with people you could never otherwise befriend if it wasn’t for your team and travel to places you would never go.
These are the lengths that only football fans can reach for one of the only things that remain the same throughout each and everyone’s lives, no matter what might come across on the journey that is called life, our favourite football team.
