ToffeeWeb - Season 2008-09

The Mail Bag

The Liege Experience

The ground was a shithole, seating was disgusting. I was sat up in the pigeon shit next to a large red steel structure (even the top balcony seating was 10 times better). <>P> At the end, around 200 Everton fans were left for 30 mins waiting for buses to take us back to the station after the original 6 buses and then 2 more were stampeded. The organisation was a shambles. The cops didn't give a shit about us and communicated nothing.

Back in the city, the cops (bless them) were ready in riot gear and water cannons. What a lovely way to treat us. The whole atmosphere was horrible and at times I think the cops wanted a fight.

Having been to Nuremberg last season and Liege, I can honestly say I would never go back to Liege if they paid me to (I actually thought we would get treated worse in Germany).
Andy Wait, Warrington Posted 03/10/2008 at 21:10:57

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Dave Pilkington
1 Posted 04/10/2008 at 08:36:35

Don?t worry Andy, We won?t be going to Europe for a long time. Apart from our holidays!

Marco Giardiello
2 Posted 04/10/2008 at 09:24:30

I?m a Blue but I actually now live in Liège and I was at the game. There are always that many police out in the city here. Even on a normal Friday and Saturday night the bars areas are full of police, so don?t think it was an anti-Everton thing. This is basically a crap city with a lot of crime problems and the police are always very heavy handed. It's horrible and I don?t agree with it at all, but that's just the way it is.

And of course their stadium is crap... they haven?t got a billionaire supermarket owner prepared to build them a new one!

Andy Lloyd
3 Posted 04/10/2008 at 10:15:53

Nor have we!

Dave Wilson
4 Posted 04/10/2008 at 10:46:46

Their stadium might be cheap and cheerful, but due to the way its designed, the Liege fans provided the best atmosphere you people have witnessed this year

The Police where ridiculously OTT, but that?s par for the course in most countries now, we are paying for the English football fans sins of the past.

Eric Myles
5 Posted 04/10/2008 at 11:06:18

The police presence was probably just a reaction to the locals tarring us with the same brush as our loveable neighbours and their previous reputation in Belgium?

Paul Wilson
6 Posted 04/10/2008 at 11:09:52

Marco,
you don't need to be a billionaire to have half-decent seating. The seats in the away end were filthy. No wonder nobody sat down. Funny that the home end seats were cleaner...

Thomas McGrath
7 Posted 04/10/2008 at 15:58:42

I thought the bars were plentiful and the locals fine ? 10 times better than Florence and Brann grounds... shite, but seen worse.

Steven Dunlop
8 Posted 04/10/2008 at 19:34:14

We got CS gas fired at us in the bar in the city center with most blues in the celtic bar the police were a joke.

Paul Gladwell
9 Posted 05/10/2008 at 12:16:37

I thought the atmosphere they created in the ground was as good as anything I have seen, the police where after trouble, so were the liege and so too were the old head Everton firm that turned up so it was always going to be a nasty place, I have to say too that the amount of beauts who follow Everton these days is more than ever, those pricks who where throwing cans, bottles and flares around, just missing kids should fuck off and support Rangers or Newcastle and sing your boring Saha song their every two minutes for six fucking hours.

Mick Fleming
10 Posted 05/10/2008 at 14:00:27

Liege is an absolute shithole; I had this picture in my head of a very cosmopolitan city with friendly locals. The city centre wasn’t that bad and we sat in a bar listening to our fellow Evertonians singing.
We left the city at 5:30 and jumped a taxi to the stadium; as soon as we got out we received dog?s abuse from the Liege fans walking to the game. When I found a friendly one he said Liverpool fans had been shite and none of them spoke English, he said Everton fans had been fantastic and that was even during our home legs (made me smile anyway).
The ground was shite but the atmosphere fantastic. The Corporate facilities were above and beyond ours by a mile.
No one has mentioned the 8 Evertonians stabbed in the city centre before the game. The only solace from the experience was when the Everton fans completely ransacked a service station outside Liege. Whilst I don?t support this it was like watching supermarket sweep and I honestly thought we would be pulled on our way to Calais.
This trip doesn?t even compare with how bad Fiorentina was.

Damian Scott
11 Posted 07/10/2008 at 12:16:33

I can’t blame them to be honest.... Remember Euro 2000 and the lovely England ’fans’?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/794393.stm

I know a lot of the Everton crowd are not like this, but you can’t blame the Belgian cops for lumping us all in the same basket....