Europa run article

I had the great luck to attend several of these matches notably home Juve/Hamburg and away to Basel. Also numerous early matches. What a fantastic ride that was!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52608863

 

Any specific memories of yours during that run @SullyTexan ? That is amazing that you got to witness so much of it in person.

 

Here are a couple:

1. Traveling to Basel with the Fulham faithful was awesome. Congregating in a pub b4 and after the match was insane. Travelling in the tram back to the town center after the match with a bunch of pissed off Basel fans...not so much! The hung over plane ride home on easy jet was not a lot of fun at 5am either.
2. Witnessing the Dempsey chip from behind the goal where if there was no net, the ball would have bounced into my lap. I just saw it drift in and pandemonium set in. Probably the best sports moment of my life.
3. Walking away from the grounds b4 the hamburg match without a ticket disgusted, but then at the last second finding a tout selling one ticket was miraculous
4. Just being to see all these different European clubs that I would never get to watch in person was also very cool. I probably went to about 75% of the home Europa matches.

The whole Europa experience was just icing on the cake. I was just happy being a Fulham fan on a two year expat journey and going to matches. Europa league was a great bonus. Damn I miss going to matches!

 

One other minor thing I forgot to mention is that my daughter was born in London the November before the Europa run. I have to give Kudos to the wife who "allowed" me to indulge in my Fulham excapades both when she was pregnant and afterwards. So before we got relegated this last time I took my daughter over to see the last match of the season vs. Newcastle so she could see what it was all about (while we were still in the Prem). We got trounced but she loved it nonetheless. If she is not a Fulham fan now, there is nothing else I could have done. My avatar is a pic from that match.

For the Basel match they had already flown back to Texas for Christmas and I was following the next week so I was flying solo otherwise very unlikely I would have gotten blessing to go. Timing is everything!