Not going to the semi final, and won't be going to the final. Two reasons.
A. I won't qualify for a ticket. I did qualify for the Watford final, but not last year. Thankfully, due to someone on here going on holiday that weekend, he made his ticket available to me. Thanks S.
B. It's just too expensive. Last June probably cost me nearly €450, once flights, hotel and walking around money was taken into account. I don't feel I can justify that, even for a cup final.
I don't believe I'm better qualified than you in terms of points, mate. I just don't believe it.
Last year, I wasn't qualified for the first few wodges of tickets, but they kept releasing them in dribs and drabs (presumably because of returns from the associations), right up to quite close to the actual match. About a week or two before, I idly put the OS on to see if any tickets were available — telling myself sternly in advance that I wasn't buying one, it was just to take a peep, as it were — and stone me, there were single seats here and there up in the gods! I must have sat and stared at that screen for about twenty minutes, with my finger hovering over Buy. I certainly couldn't afford it, and it was stupid. But then I said to myself, “Wake up, mate — this is the
rags! These are the people who had their foot on our neck for twenty years. These are the hated, arrogant enemy. For decades and decades. Time for payback, on one of the world's biggest stages. You
cannot not go.” So I hit Buy (it was about £110 I think, and up there you feel as if you're in outer space). It set me back financially, and I was in the red for quite a while. But I didn't regret having been there. At that point, I thought it was a once in a lifetime thing. Ironically, it may well happen again…
If we get through to the final again, and it's the rags again, it's problematic, for sure. If it's Coventry — for sure not. I won't be going. Again, it's not the right time of the year, financially.
Wembley for semi-finals is a luxury, it seems to me. I went to the Arsenal one (and felt sick at the end, another match we should have bloody well won). Equally, Community Shield. But not going to see City in a final, that hurts. I was at the League Cup final in ’74, and the F.A. Cup final in ’81 (too young for ’69), so I hadn't actually seen City win a final until the League Cup one against the Arse in 2018. That was therefore a big day for me.
On the other hand, even had I been qualified, I was not vaguely tempted either by Porto or Istanbul. What with the Covid tests, Porto was one hell of a business. And Istanbul is the other side of Europe. Just out of the question, financially. If we got to the final of the CL this year, though, and I could somehow get a ticket…
I'll never be maxed out as far as City at Wembley in a final is concerned.
Never. Like Moses and the tribes of Israel, we wandered in the desert. Not for forty years, but for many. These are astonishing times. They will not last for ever.