🗣️ 'We were told it was going ahead and we had to play' amylawrence71, OliverKay and DTathletic speak to those who were involved in Champions League matches on 9/11 21 years after the event. 𝑭𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 🔓
On September 11 and 12, 2001, there were due to be Champions League fixtures across Europe. Our writers — who were covering three of the matches — look back at what happened…David Seaman went into his hotel room, picked up the remote control, and started flicking through the channels, hoping to find anything watchable to pass the time before Arsenal’s first Champions League game of the season. Match-day preparations for away fixtures always followed the same schedule.
Versions of the same scene were being replicated in restaurants and bars across the city as word spread to the fans who had travelled to the Mediterranean island for the game. Miles Saward, from Sport Options, was used to arranging for groups to criss-cross Europe and beyond as a travel operator specialising in sporting events.
UEFA instructed there should be a minute’s silence at all matches but otherwise clubs were ordered to go on as normal. “We were advised there could be more security issues and problems if we postponed,” a UEFA spokesman explained. ”We took the decision that there should be a minute’s silence to show respect but recognised that, at an advanced stage of preparations, the games should go ahead.”
For the record, Arsenal lost 1-0. Ashley Cole conceded a penalty and was sent off early on. While mindful that this was an unprecedented situation with no rules about how to behave, it is bizarre to now read a match report from the time which focuses on the details of the game before mentioning the events of the day only in the final couple of paragraphs. “I bet there was not a player on the pitch who had not thought about what had happened that afternoon while they were playing,” Seaman says.
Many from Arsenal wished the same had happened when they were asked to carry on at a time when nobody really wanted to play or watch sport. “Nothing of that magnitude had happened before in our lifetimes,” says Seaman. “When they cancelled the rest of the Champions League games the next day, I wondered why they didn’t act quicker for us. It was not the right way to go about things.”For Liverpool, it was supposed to be a red-letter day.
For Liverpool’s players, the usual routine before an evening match at Anfield was to meet for lunch at a local hotel, then go for a couple of hours’ sleep and relax before meeting again for their pre-match meal during the afternoon.Some of the players drifted off to sleep quickly enough, but others turned on the TV and were stunned by the news that was filtering through from New York. Defender Jamie Carragher recalls he slept first and then, upon waking up, was directed to the news channels.
Looking back, it seems incongruous that there was a minor squabble between the managers afterwards. Boavista had seven players booked, but their coach Jaime Pacheco blamed Liverpool for what he considered an over-zealous approach, saying, “We came here to play football, not rugby. Compared to Liverpool, we are not well endowed physically. We could have been massacred by some of their challenges.” Houllier disagreed, saying his players were “strong and physical”, but never excessively so.
He was on good form, too. On the Saturday, United had beaten Everton 4-1 at Old Trafford. Midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron had put on a masterclass and, in the match-day programme that day, the more observant readers might have noticed newly-signed Laurent Blanc’s face had been superimposed over Jaap Stam’s in the official team photograph. Centre-back Stam had been sold, controversially, two weeks earlier.
We changed the subject to talk about Veron’s mastery of the ball. Ferguson was just as effusive about Blanc and seemed surprised to learn it was going to be the first time the Frenchman had ever played in the Champions League. And there was a classic Ferguson put-down when he was told David O’Leary, his Leeds United counterpart, had said the decision to move out Stam to Lazio could cost him the European Cup. “What can I say?” Ferguson responded, in his most dismissive tone.
In ordinary circumstances, the players would have had a bit of lunch at their hotel and spent the afternoon resting in their rooms before travelling to the Olympic Stadium for a training session that evening. “We were on one of the last flights out of Gatwick airport,” says Kerry Davies, one of the United fans on the trip. “I’d been watching everything unfold on television during the day and when we got to the airport we weren’t even sure the flights were going to leave. It was just a really weird atmosphere, from start to finish.”
If that sounds terribly callous, it is worth remembering it was one of those occasions when the football authorities all seemed to have a different idea about the best course of action. The Football League went ahead with their midweek League Cup matches. FIFA also opted against postponing international matches in Asia the following weekend. But UEFA had been heavily criticised for going ahead with the Champions League matches the night before.
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