Expected nothing else tbh. They dont give a shit about us. Would have taken somebody dying for any kind of public acknowledgement to occur.
organisation was a genuine disgrace. I had suffered nasty Sunstroke the day before, was already feeling quite weak after barely recovering from illness in the week before flying out, none of that is uefas doing but i then got stuck on one of those buses after being told no food or drink was allowed on them for hours without water or somewhere to piss and without even being allowed off them when we decided walking would be a much better alternative. Essentially imprisoned in a sauna and left to dehydrate.
when we eventually arrived at the ground hours later, we still couldn't get access to water because everything outside the ground had sold out or stopped serving to get everybody into the ground and the horrendous facilities in the ground had hour+ at a minimum long queues. I couldn't physically stand in them and was also unwilling to miss most of the match for it.
It completely fucked me up for the game, mouth was often too dry to produce noise when trying to sing and had to regularly sit down due to bouts of dizziness and fear of passing out. Im certain the sheer joy of winning and the adrenaline of that was the only thing that got me through that day without collapsing and when I looked around, I saw loads of people who all looked equally as fucked as me. Even the atmosphere that night was one of the entire crowd, both us and inter being knackered.
It didnt ruin it for me but it did tarnish it a bit. i certainly dont have great memories of the build up as you'd likely expect from somebody watching their club win their first champions league.
I'm fortunate I'm relatively healthy, young-ish and generally in okay nick. I'm certain other more vulnerable people had it much worse than I did and God only knows how there wasn't any fatalities.
Going back, i had managed to get water after the game and we won so i didnt care one bit at the time but it was somehow even more disorganised looking back.
Pitch black with no lighting on uneven rocky floor was asking for trouble then the complete chaos with the buses had to be borderline criminal. Having people literally running around a busy car park In darkness from bus to bus looking for one that was going where you wanted and had space was like something out of a disaster movie when panic sets in.
Bus drivers parked up with engine and lights off on empty buses not knowing themselves what or where they're supposed to be going. We ended up getting on a bus because I spoke to the driver of one who told us he didn't know where he was going but then told us he wasn't going to the place we wanted to go to. I queried how he knew that he wasnt going to where we wanted to go if he didn't know where he was going, which stumped him then myself and a few others that were looking for buses going to the same place essentially told him he was going where we wanted to go and he said okay and let us all pile on before having us sit in a pitch black makeshift carpark for several hours until traffic finally started moving again.
If we had lost and experienced that same shitshow, it would not have gone well at all.
Even the buses from the airport the morning of the game were dreadful. We flew into istanbul overnight from antalya, declined the opportunity to book airport travel with our hotel to save a bit of money and uefa were heavily encouraging us to use their free coaches.
We got there before the coaches were scheduled to start so had a little wait, nobody around to tell us where exactly to go or give any information, only big signs that lead us outside. queues started to form around us, it hits the time the first coach was due, still not an official in sight, we wait, and wait, most of the people who arrived around the time we did have since given up by the time it's an hour over when they should have started and were jumping in taxi's.
two buses finally arrived together nearly 2 hours after the first one was due and should have been over half a dozen of them by now. Queues were significantly shorter now after so many gave up waiting and because there wasnt enough to completely fill both buses they refused to allow anybody on or to move until they had enough (ive no idea why) I wasn't really bothered about the wait as our flight had been bumped forward so we hadn't planned to be there that early anyway which is why we just waited but the disorganisation was pathetic and should have set alarm bells for what was to come.
I had a top trip overall, something I'll never ever forget but every single part of the uefa organised side of my trip was abysmal without exception and for them not to make a public acceptance is an insult.
