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Celtic Games – Seville 2003
Seville:
(by Huddler of KStreet forum)
In my lifetime there has been nothing that has captured the true soul of Celtic as these few days at the end of the most exciting European run of my lifetime, under the most courageous and ambitious Celtic manager of my lifetime, who included in his team the finest Celtic footballer i’ve been lucky enough to see. But that was only the football side.
Seville was a reawakening. Never will i forget driving down the highways of Andalucia with Hoops and tricolours hanging from the windows rappling in the wind. We had driven the entire way from Frankfurt in Germany in a camper van, but when we closed in on Seville, to see the other cars packet to the roof full with weans and granny’s all bedecked in Hoops, to see fans singing as they refilled at petrol pumps, impromptu singalongs in traffic jams and everyone you saw smiled and tingled with sheer childlike excitement.
Seville was living the dream for a vast amount of Celtic fans. A real life European Final with real life bonafide heroes to pin our hopes on. It went around that 1% of global air travel was taken up by Celtic fans heading for Spain. They said there was 80,000 of us…..but i met people who had come from Australia for it, i met a trio who had hitchiked from Sweden, a pal of mine made his way from Baku, Azerbaijan. We, ourselves had arrived in Spain from Ireland or Scotland – if there were not 100,000+ Celtic fans in Seville, i’ll eat my sombrero.
The atmosphere was sublime. I have described it since as being like going on holidays with 100,000 of your closest pals. It was a festival of Celtic on an unimaginable scale, in a wonderful place at a wonderful in our Celtic supporting lives. We had been second favourites agains Blackburn, Vigo, Stuttgart, Liverpool and were 2nd favourites here again. Didn’t matter, didn’t even cross our minds. We had watched a Celtic team that would score against any side in the world, any in the entire world. They were that good. The songs, sung in throngs hundreds strong, beneath blue skies and with the backdrop of Sevilla stunning architecture. It was, at that point, the happiest, most exciting time of my life.
The behaviour of our fans still warms me. The Uefa Fair Play award was something unprecedented, and something that everyone who was there can claim to own a piece of. We mingled with the wonderful locals of that fairytale city, the police even smiled at us – the whole world was how i wanted it to be.
Part of me feels now that it was a dream, but it was not. It was real, it was the reality of Celtic, it was the pure expression of joy, pride, emotion and friendliness that makes this Club more than great, that transcends all, even football or victory. It was the day i went from loving Celtic to it being a part of me, built into my make-up. The day I realised that the Paradise idyll was actually a truth, realised that the Club was a sheer beauty, and although weather-beaten, slandered and intimidated, in no way fatigued. My memories are now patchwork, gleaming gold and red, green and white – a blur, a flash; as indescribable as a flavour.
All i recall is the passion and the joy, the likes of which i count myself lucky to have seen once in my life, and which i crave again like nothing else.