TLDR We went to a live footie match. Why am I writing all these shit? Who the fuck knows!
Well that was an interesting weekend. We arrived in Gothenburg on Saturday around 17:00, checked into our hotel & decided to have a walk around the city. The city was covered in blue & white as IFK Gothenburg had a home match in the Swedish league. One of my sons had a Juventus scarf & as I was taking a pic of him holding it above his head we noticed a man rushing excitedly across the road towards us. He approaches my son directly & produces his phone. He furiously scrolls through some photos. Lo & behold he is pictured with Kephren, Fagioli, Danilo ... the whole Juve squad. He proceeds to tell us where Juve is staying pointing to the hotel. I notice a Meet & Greet card in his hand with the jj logo.
My sons are now excited too & we go to the said hotel lobby. We see some Juve staff members but sadly no players come out. We hung around for about 45 minutes interacting with some Juve fans. As we sit there we are approached by 2 chinese students (we came to learn that they are studying at a uni in the city). I inquire if they are Juve or Atletico fans, they say no to both. They just want autographs. They exchange contacts with my son & head out to hunt for Atletico players. After a while a security guard comes & informs us that the players won’t be coming out due to security reasons so we leave.
Our hotel is diagonally across from where Juve is staying. As we walk in we hear noise from the lobby. We go in and the Atletico team is climbing up the stairs to a cordoned section of the hotel. The players, except for a few, ignore everybody. It’s pretty late (around 22:30) so they must be tired. My sons catch glimpses of Griezmann & Joao Felix and they are awed. They duly message the Chinese students. We plan to wake up early & go back to where Juve is staying to see if we can meet some players.
Come next morning and of course we oversleep. Now we are fighting against time to eat breakfast & checkout before 11:00. It’s tight! I hear my sons screaming that they can see Atletico players from the balcony. We barely make it & head out. At the lobby we meet the Chinese students. They look sad. One of them is holding a Rodrigo De Paul Argentina tshirt. He says that the Atletico players didn’t stop but he is happy that RDP smiled and waved at him when he shouted his name & waved the tshirt. We part ways as we are trying to get to see if we can still meet some Juve players at their hotel.
As we enter the lobby of the hotel a Juve supporter tells us that the team will leave through the backdoor. He sprints that way. We follow suit, I walk & my sons sprint. There are about 50 Juve supporters. Many are kids! This is shocking to me. All sorts of Juve tshirts are on display. The kappa d+ one edges the sony minidisc one by a tiny margin. As we wait a gentleman in an Ariston Platini tshirt era talks about watching Baggio. The mood is positive. The backdoor opens & the crowd is excited. We are all shepherded by a Norwegian woman who speaks Italian. A young boy shouts at her in English saying, “Swedish please!” Everybody laughs as she promises to improve her Swedish language skills.
There are 2 black Jeeps, 2 minibuses & one big bus parked in the back. The minibuses are aligned to the backdoor & soon the training staff start coming out. The crowd surges forward & there are a few ciaos here and there. The Norwegian woman implores everyone to yield space for the staff to get through. The backdoor closes. The kids groan! After 10 minutes the backdoor opens again and some more staff members walk out to the minibuses. Suddenly one of the kids sees some players crossing presumably from the dinning room to their rooms & starts shouting their names ... Bremer, Gatti, Savona, Cambiaso, Fagioli, Locatelli! Am impressed by his knowledge of the players. None come out & the backdoor closes again. Sad little faces stare blankly in the baking sun.
After 45 minutes the backdoor opens and the Norwegian woman explains to the crowd that everyone has to move clear the backdoor area as the big bus will be driving in to pick the players. She explains that the bus has to park as close to the backdoor as possible & threatens that no one will come out if the area is not cleared. The crowd moves reluctantly & murmurs of disappointment are heard as the small kids are squeezed out by the crowd jostling for space. The bus edges forward pushing the crowd out of the way & aligns its middle door to the hotel's backdoor. Finally the players dash into the bus with headphones on barely waving to the crowd. Only Motta comes to the front door of the bus & briefly greets some of the supporters. A young Swedish lad about 20 years old who was politely standing silently beside me for the whole time suddenly transforms into the devil of a possessed fan. He screams & shouts in Italian in a proper metal voice. This encourages the crowd to scream! One fan shouts McKennie! and everybody laughs. The fans try to get glimpses of the players but the bus windows are tinted. The bus starts for the stadium as the crowd dispasses. A Pakistani man with a new green/black Sassuolo Locatelli tshirt in wrapping & a pen sits dejectedly. I can’t fathom which is worse. Being a Locatelli fan boy or how the players treated the fans.
We walk to the stadium & there are more Juve fans in Sweden than I thought. This stadium (Nya Ullevi) was designed with athletics in mind. It is not conducive for football at all. It’s also one of those stadiums where you have to stand to accommodate the next fan to get to their seats. One of the fans says excuse me & as I stand he calls me Lillian Thuram! Am like mf who?
@JCK would be proud of me. The juve staff are busy prepping cones & balls for the warm up. The goalies come out first & it’s cool to see the training being implemented. Di Gregorio is in goal. Perin & Pinsoglio form a triangle with Di Gregorio by standing on the left & right. Di Gregorio passes the ball to the trainer who stands at the edge of the box simulating that he is being pressed. The trainer passes the ball back to Di Gregorio who then must launch the ball to either Perin or Pinsoglio. When Perin/Pinsoglio gets the ball they must control it & pass it back to the trainer. BTW Perin is really good at ball control. Weird he can’t run with it at his feet. The players are divided into the starting 11 who do a rigorous warmup while the subs play a game of ‘the ball shouldn't touch the ground’.
As for the game
@Osman gave a good recension already but I’d like to add that:
Di Gregorio was scared to use the triangle pass at least once but had a magical save on Griezmann.
Dusan needs to find his shooting boots soon.
Thuram was in beast mode in the first half.
I saw positive signs of us breaking from a press but passing backwards again to let Atletico regroup.
Fagioli & Danilo came to warm up right in front of where we were sitting. Simon Colinet was running them through their paces shouting ‘dai, dai,dai’ & then halfway through realised he is not in Italy & switched to english ‘go,go,go’ That was quite funny. Fagioli is a lazy fuck & had to be prodded hard by Colinet.
We dashed out after the match & went straight to the hotel to pick up our stuff & leave. At the lobby we met the Chinese lads and bade them farewell. I hope they get some autographs.
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