Liverpool v Barcelona at Anfield on Tuesday night. Ajax v Tottenham in Amsterdam on the Wednesday. I was there. Or at least, I think I was. There are newspaper cuttings that suggest this was the case, with words that sound familiar, if a little more fuzzy and overheated than usual.
Those two days in early May still have a kind of fog about them even now. The Anfield game in particular feels like a moment of shared hysteria, the kind of game you watch through the prism of the crowd, the whole spectacle framed by their reactions.
It’s no secret Anfield does this to people. Pep Guardiola calls it “that place”, and seems more spooked every time he goes back, a man who has talked himself into seeing ghosts. For all the myth-making, you have to admit he’s got a point.
Perhaps there’s a science to it, the way the Anfield noise reverberates back across those tight single-tier stands. Perhaps it’s geography. Travel to Liverpool across the country and there is a feeling of the land falling away as you get closer, arriving at a kind of end point in that low grid of streets.
Science, geography, whatever. The end result is the same – Anfield does weird things to people.
The night before the Barcelona game had brought another note of drama, Vincent Kompany punting the ball past Kasper Schmeichel at the Etihad Stadium to give Manchester City a narrow but decisive-looking Premier League win.
It didn’t seem to have affected the vibe around the ground. Quite the opposite. It still felt like the witching hour. Anfield was a beautiful tableau before kick-off: the red shirts, the deep green of the stage, the powder blue as the light faded above the lip of the stands.
It is easy to forget Liverpool had a significantly weakened team, with no Mo Salah and no Roberto Firmino. The opening goal after seven minutes came at the end of a move involving Joël Matip, Jordan Henderson and Divock Origi who, for all their many qualities, are not players Spain’s elite clubs will have spent their pre-season anxiously studying. But how will we stop Matip? But they did for Barcelona all the same.
A 1-0 half-time lead felt like a foothold. The game changed completely between 54 and 56 minutes, as Georginio Wijnaldum scored twice. The first was made by Trent Alexander-Arnold, and involved giving the ball away in midfield then simply smashing through Jordi Alba to get it back, before pinging a cross into the six-yard box. The second one was a power-header into the corner.
At which point the night fell apart. People leapt and span around and tried to stand on things. The moon seemed to scroll backward through the sky. In the row of seats in front of me Jamie Carragher jumped around beating on the desks, combination-punching the air, hopping about like a seal chasing a beach ball. Which seemed like a fair point well made in the circumstances.
The fourth goal, the clincher, contained acting. Liverpool had a corner kick down below where we were sitting. Alexander-Arnold walked away nonchalantly, shoulders drooped – hmmm, where am I going? – then ran back suddenly and smacked the ball into the path of Origi, the acting, really quite good acting, all part of the pass.
I left Anfield around midnight, at which point it was clear football was going to fill the next 24 hours. In the lobby of my Manchester airport hotel everyone was still talking about football. A few short, adrenaline-churned hours later everyone at breakfast was talking about football. In departures and security everyone was talking about football. In Amsterdam the passport queue was full of Tottenham fans and various red-eyed media types, all on the same midweek weekender, all talking about football.
It was a different feeling around the Johan Cruyff Arena. This is a huge concrete shell of a ground. If Anfield was warm and persuasive the Cruyff felt overwhelming. Ajax supporters had set up a noisy, slightly hostile fan park outside. There was a fug of sweet smoke and a drunken crush around the stairwells and stadium bars.
Getting in was terrible. The admin system had crashed. No lunch, no water, four hours’ sleep: this felt like a day taking a wrong turn. Upstairs there was a further shemozzle over access. As the game kicked off, charged with filing 900 words on the final kick, I crammed myself into a concrete ledge without power or wifi right up in the gods, the players a set of moving shapes miles below.
Spurs were already without Harry Kane. After four minutes they were 2-0 down on aggregate, Matthijs de Ligt heading in a corner. With 36 minutes gone it was 3-0, Hakim Ziyech smashing a shot into the corner. And at that moment this was pretty much over, a re-entry into the everyday after the wildness of Anfield. Ajax celebrated the moment, a team savouring the high. Spurs looked spent, cooked, done.
Somehow they just kept coming. The first goal of the second-half comeback was a thing of beauty, a blitzkrieg down the centre launched by Danny Rose’s nutmeg and speared long pass. Dele Alli played a lovely touch to Lucas Moura, who scored. Four minutes later Moura did something brilliant with his feet in a tiny space in a crowded area. It was 3-2 and Spurs were playing through a kind of rage.
Jan Vertonghen hit the bar with four minutes left and you could see the waves of fear rolling around the ground. Everyone knew what was coming. Into the 96th minute, Moura took a lovely, easy little flick from Alli and just tucked the ball into the corner with thrilling ease.
At the final whistle the Spurs players didn’t really know what to do. They leapt and clutched each other. Mauricio Pochettino was suddenly there, punching the air with both fists. Anfield had felt like a universal effort, something the entire stadium dredged out of itself. This was more distinct, a display of will from the players that was easier to stand and admire, but no less moving for that.
Barcelona had simply collapsed the night before. Ajax played their part in Amsterdam, a brilliantly constructed team reaching their own two-season high in that first half.
The night ended in more confusion, with a struggle to escape the out-of-town megadrome. A mess of absent taxis was followed by a long walk into town and a slightly messy stroll through the canal bars of a city that wasn’t going to sleep.
It is easy to become a little jaded by European club football, this Gazprom-fest, this endlessly excitable arm of Big Entertainment. But this was something else, a piece of extended sporting theatre that still feels a little raw and undigested, as though some small part of it will just keep on flickering away on an endless replay at the back of your head. Nothing quite this much fun has ever happened before in this competition. It may never happen again. Which is, all things considered, probably for the best.