Shanghai Shenhua....

There’s that moment at the football. The private excitement you feel when climbing up the steps inside the stand, trying to find the tier you’re sitting in. You’re climbing faster and faster, because it’s two minutes before kick off and because you’re excited, and you can hear the crowd and they’re roaring, louder and louder. Then suddenly you emerge from the hallway onto the stand, into the air. The rows and rows of seats, the immaculate green pitch laid out in front of you, the shouting, the smells, the colours, the lights and the flags.

 It’s magical, really, and only someone who has been there would understand. You feel so happy on the stand in that moment, you could be in your living room with a beer and ten thousand mates, everyone wants the same thing, everyone is shouting, willing it, willing the ref to blow the whistle so the game can begin.

Maybe I just feel like this because I’m quite new to it all, and I’ve only ever been to two other stadiums – Eastlands and the new Wembley. I’m spoilt. I never went to Maine Road, never saw the broken seats and the stink of piss and blood that I have been told defined the place. Never had to sit next to some fat, stinking drunk skinhead ranting about the linesman. No, all my memories of football are of sunny afternoons and pies at half time, comfortable stands, and nursing hangovers at the game knowing all my mates are watching it in the pub back home.

I expected by first football game in Shanghai to shatter all of this. There were always going to be problems turning up without tickets and trying to reach that fine line of haggling with the touts, whereby you get what you want and don’t look like a mug. Plus, being in a stand with ten, maybe twenty thousand Chinese dudes? All spitting and smoking and staring at the foreign guys, Jesus. I was half looking forward to it, but half dreading it.

But I was wrong, my untarnished image of live football remains intact. The arena, Hongkou, was fucking awesome, the fans were amazing, we could drink and smoke in the stands, and Shenhua – whose reputation is so bad in Shanghai that even my ageing neighbour, who speaks no English, had managed to tell me he didn’t think I should go – were on form.

It was an ACL game, the Asian Champions League, and it was Shenhua’s first step in making up with their fans after last year, when they crashed out of the competition with only one win and then blew the domestic title on the last day of the season.

 Whenever I write about football in Shanghai I almost always use the term ‘long-suffering’ to describe Shenhua’s fans, but you wouldn’t think it looking at them last night. They didn’t stop chanting once, their matching blue shirts and flags making them look like an army. There were no away fans, so the Blue Devils, as they are called here, were at both ends of the pitch, behind either goal, baiting each other with their chants.

 We were stuck up in the top tier because the tout only had ‘VIP’ tickets. Anyone reading this and thinking about going to the Hongkou should know that this means sit-as-far-away-from-the-pitch-as-you-can-tickets. Go for the normal ones, then, if you’re lucky, you might be able to get in with the ‘ultras’, and really get involved. Next time - and believe me there will be a next time, I am hooked - we’ll sit with them.

 As for the game, Shenhua played some sexy football, and they actually looked like they were enjoying themselves. Barcos, the Argentine striker who scored the penalty and netted a second in injury time, was relentless in his attack of the Singapore team’s defence. Yu Tao and Yin Xifu, brought on as a substitute late on, also scored in the last 17 minutes, making the final score 4 – 1.

 Injury time seemed to go on forever too, maybe the ref was enjoying the match as much as we were. My match report is on www.shanghaiist.com , so I won’t bore you with any more details. All that is for me to say is roll on next week, when my new team take on Japan’s Kashima Antlers, and probbly get thumped. Hell, I can take it, I’m a Man City fan.