Another Messi Adventure- Barcelona vs Benfica (5)

You can donate to our Just Giving page where all funds will go to Oscar here: http://www.justgiving.com/7ma7ches7coun7ries7days

We'd had a fairly miserable time in Paris, & following 4 hours sleep, for the 3rd night in a row, we showered & got ourselves ready to leave for the airport. The snooze button had taken a bit of a beating this morning, & we were already behind schedule. 

Those who've been following this blog from the beginning will be aware that Jamie's sister-in-law had sadly lost her battle with cancer a week before we were due to set off & Jamie was flying back into England from Charles de Gaulle for her funeral, so we said our goodbyes in a bit of a rush before braving the Paris Metro. We flagged a taxi just to ask the question of getting us there on time,but the €150 was a real budget buster, especially following on from the beating our wallets had taken the night previous, so we had to brave the Paris Metro at morning rush hour and were already behind schedule

For new readers, we have a set, joint, budget within which to do this, & so far, it's only been breached to arrange Jamie's last minute flights back home & back out to rejoin us in Hamburg after the funeral, so all costs have to come back off the other end of the trip.

The Metro was worse than we could've imagined & we're 45 minutes from our bus to the airport, when we make our first Metro change, with less than 2 hours till boarding & then a 60km bus journey to get there. Knowing Ryanair's penchant for making an extra quid, there's no way they'll be doing us any favours, & I'm beginning to regret turning down our €150 taxi. 

There are no more flights into Barcelona today after this one, so I'm already weighing up the consequences of missing this flight. An absolute fortune to get back out of Paris, & probably just straight home, as, if we missed the Barcelona game, we would be completely finished. No 7 games in 7 days & we would've let down those who've been following our efforts, those who've been exceptionally generous in their donations & worst of all, wee Oscar himself. 

There was a race to catch the plane before it left.

 I have to admit, my nerves were wrecked at this stage & I was clearly doing Dean's head in. I was trying to scramble together some sort of contingency plan, but as Dean put it "There's no point in worrying until we've definitely missed it. There's no problem yet.".

I was recalculating as every stop passed but it was clear that we needed unbelievable luck to make it, & it seems that someone was watching over us. From then on, every train ran smoothly, every connection was sitting on the platform waiting for us & there was even a bus ready to leave the other side, once we got there. They run every 45 mins, so any more waiting & we would've been sunk. However, the bus was still scheduled to arrive 5 mins after our gate closes & even though we've checked in online, we have extra luggage to put in the hold & that has to be in 40 mins before departure, so were still up against it

The bus mercifully gets in ahead of schedule & I sprint ahead to the check in desk, whilst Dean grabs the bags. Again, we needn't have worried as the desk is still open due to the number of people arguing over having to pay Ryanair's standard charges for excess or oversized baggage, & we're smoothly into line. 

You can always rely on Ryanair to have chaos at their airports. Mad dash through security done, safe in the knowledge that their are other passengers for our flight amongst us, delaying take off, we head to board. They've been disembarking passengers from our plane, so holding back those getting on at a rope. We walk up & they open a rope on the other side which we saunter up to & amazingly are the first to board the flight! After all that panic!

The relief is overwhelming & the adrenalines been going mad so I'm buzzing to be going to Barcelona, my favourite city in Europe. The flight itself is packed with Benfica fans, & our all male cabin crew consist of a Scottish Celtic fan, Portugese Benfica fan & a Spanish Barca fan. As Celtic need Barca to get a result against Benfica tonight, the banter (hate that word) amongst them is relentless, & using every PA announcement to sing their songs & wind each other up. They also take a keen interest in what we're doing & spread the word on Oscar's story to the Benfica fans, which was great.

Arriving in Barcelona, it's T-Shirt weather & the coats come off, as we make our way onto Placa Catalunya. The complete antithesis of Paris for us, we are completely chilled & the city is buzzing. All anyone's talking about is tonight's game & Messi possibly breaking Gerd Muller's record of scoring 85 goals in a single calendar year. He needs 1 to equal it & 2 to have it outright.

We go straight to our digs, a hostel bang in the middle of Placa Catalunya, a fantastic location & the place is brilliant. They still charged us for Jamie's bed but I should've cancelled ahead, so my fault. The plan is to get to the stadium as early as possible to sort tickets, but it turns out there's a Barcelona club shop on the next road which sells them, so bags are in & I have to make a few personal calls to sort out a few things back at home, whilst Dean goes out to sort tickets. Within 1 hour of landing, all the problems that we had are sorted, bags are dropped off, tickets are in hand (well,we have to collect them at the ground, but still) & we have hours to spare. Unbelievable feeling, considering 6 hours ago,we were looking at flights home from Paris.

We carried out a bit of repair work on the flag & bought some Barca stickers, which we stuck in the 'T' & the 'M' in Team Oscar, as a bit of a charm offensive to avoid a repeat of last night. I also wore a Barca jacket to make it clear we weren't rival fans

'Charm Offensive' additions to the banner

We elect to have a beer & our first actual meal that wasn't on the go. As I have Wi-Fi for the first time in ages, I'm planning, & having a Facebook & Twitter offensive to get caught up, & ask Dean to just order my food. When it comes out, it's easily the biggest burger I've ever seen. Had to eat it with a knife & fork! We get chatting to some great Benfica fans & tell them all about Oscar & they're brilliant. Dead knowledgeable about football, except for one girl who said that when Everton played them in the Europa League, the Brazilian lad up front for us was brilliant. Not only was she talking about Jo, who was never brilliant for us, but we lost that game 5-0,so how anyone may have shone in that, I don't know!!

We tell them we were at the Porto game the night before, & they ask what the score was. We tell them they lost 2-1 & they all cheer, & 1 girl felt obliged to explain that "Porto is our Liverpool".

We set off for the Nou Camp around 90 mins before kick off, as it was less than 30 mins on the metro, & other than spending 10 mins trying to figure out how to get of the maze that was the station, it was just as straightforward a journey as Barcelona had delivered thus far.

We picked up the tickets & after marvelling at the wonder that was the Nou Camp, we headed in. Our tickets were lower tier in the Curva Sud, behind the goal & we hung the flag in a great spot behind the goal, in the centre of the goals. It turned out this was in the section where Barcelona's 'Ultra's' are based & we were asked to move it, as they put their own flags up just on kick off. The steward, a young girl who didn't speak much English was a great help to us, & went to find us a spot. The flag was then hung to the left of the goal, between the goal itself & the corner flag & although a few people were sitting in front of it, part obscuring it, it should've been visible, despite the cameras being located on our side.

Dean and I with the banner before kick off

By this stage, the team news is out & although everyone expected a depleted, already-qualified, Barca side, no-one expected it to be so depleted. Puyol was the only regular in the team & there was genuine shock that Villanova would rest Messi, decreasing his chances of breaking the record. Added to this, the game was fast approaching kick off & there was no sign of the late influx of home fans that we witnessed last night. 

The game kicked off with the stadium half empty & it was an absolute turkey of a game. Barca went through the motions & despite creating a few decent chances, Benfica were happy with a draw at the Nou Camp. I found this baffling, as they knew that if Celtic won, they would be out with a draw & Barca had given them a gift in the side they'd put out.

Worse than this, neither side had any attacking threat down their right hand side, which we needed to make sure the flag was seen, & despite a corner count into the double figures, there wasn't one taken in front of the flag. Regardless of this, I got a few texts from people saying they'd seen it (& us) on tv, although they knew to be looking out for it.

At half time, a group of Barca fans came over to look at the flag. They explained that they were also Celtic fans & the green & white drew their attention to come down. We explained the Celtic connection with Oscar, & the picture of Oscar.

One of the group in his Celtic shirt helped with the language barrier. Despite broken English & absolutely obliterated Catalan, he managed to tell me the fantastic story of how, having held a season ticket next to his father since 1982, they travelled together to the 1986 European Cup final. Barcelona were playing Steauea Bucharest & were massive favourites to win their first ever European Cup. Bucharest frustrated them & held on for a landmark rearguard inspired victory. On the coach home, his father broke down in tears. "Don't be upset, papa" he said "Our chance will come", "That was my chance. All I've ever wanted was to see my team lift that cup & it will never happen now". It was then that his father revealed to him that he had been battling against an illness, that would debilitate over time. He was right. He passed away in November 1991, less than six months before Barcelona won their first European Cup. This guy said that he'd been to every one they've played in, excluding the 'square post final'-a story I wasn't familiar with, & since his fathers passing, he toasts each win with a cigar & a brandy, his fathers drugs of choice. That's the sort of story that will stay with me until the day I die & I feel privileged at this stage to have met people like him. Football can be great sometimes

The 2nd half started with the 50,000 in the stadium chanting for Messi (probably less, as I doubt the Benfica fans wanted it) & when he ran down the touch line to warm up in front of us, we knew it was imminent. 35 mins left for Messi to make history, albeit at the other end from the flag. Little did he know that his own personal kryptonite was sitting in the Nou Camp that night. I've seen him play in the flesh on five occasions & each time, he's been poor. One penalty scored in the Bernabeu is the grand sum of what he's done in those games, yet every time I watch him on TV, he's incredible. 

Messi was attempting to carve his name ever more into football folklore that evening

I definitely think he's the best of all time & I'm sure he'll retire with the records to back that up. Last night, he came on cold, into what now felt like a testimonial game & 20 minutes later, departed on a stretcher & my Messi record remained intact

So Barcelona were the first home team to beat our accumulator of 7 home wins (although Ajax is off, so we're down to 6)

After the game, we have the straightforward trip back to Placa Catalunya & we decide to have a couple of beers before bed. The bars full of Benfica fans who are obviously gutted but very keen to tell us about the positive reaction that the flag got from their fans once they explained what it was, so again the word was spreading. I almost felt guilty about the Celtic T-shirt I'd gone & changed into but they knew I was only having the craic (much better word than banter) An Aussie lad we'd been chatting to earlier told us he'd seen the flag from the other end too.

The night gets a little bit livelier & I leave the Dutch barmaids to entertain Dean,whilst I ring my ma. I've not told her anything about what I'm doing, so she's not best pleased at hearing through the grapevine, but she's now got the bit between her teeth & I'm sure Belfast is getting hounded as I write this. Rounding off a great night, we head to bed around 3, safe in the knowledge that we have our half way lie-in in the morning. Barcelona really has been good to us.

Oscar himself! This is the lad with Neuroblastoma we are trying to raise awareness of

For anyone who hasn't read this blog before, we are trying to take a flag to 7 football games in 7 days in 7 different countries, to raise awareness,& money, for the Oscar Knox Appeal. Oscar is a young boy from Northern Ireland who has severe Neuroblastoma & desperately needs money to help him,& other children with this disease. 

Please read Oscar's blog here http://oscarknox.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1

You can donate to our JustGiving page here

We are funding this entire trip ourselves & 100% of what you donate will go to Oscar's Appeal. Although we were initially hesitant to be raising money whilst having a glorified holiday, so many good people have come forward to us, that it would be sinful to refuse. Help spread the word, help save a little boy's life.