Thought about whether or not to post this as it's really self indulgent and not my usual style but thought why not:
My dad and I have always had an interest in European football and thought one day it would be great to see Newcastle play in Europe. Now when we first started having those conversations when I was really young in the early 2000s and we were qualifying for Europe regularly it didn't feel like too far fetched of a dream. Obviously Mike Ashley put a dampener to that. The more time passed, the more it felt more than being a nice thing to do but more of a bucket list item. We said we'd apply for tickets for all the European away games this season no matter where they were. We thought we probably wouldn't get tickets for any of them having only about 20 loyalty points each, however we thought if any we might get lucky for Paris. We were unsuccesful with Union SG and applied for Marseille just for the sake of it. About 3 weeks ago I had 4 missed calls from my dad while I was at work and I was panicking thinking there'd been a family emergency. It was in fact my dad rininging me telling me we'd got two tickets for Marseille and should we go for it?
At this point I should say my dad hasn't been abroad for about 10 years and hasn't been on a plane for about 12 years. So when the travel agents had an offer of a straight flight to Marseille there and back from Newcastle it felt perfect. Didn't have to have added anxiety of connecting flights or making sure we got there in time. It felt like everything was in place until 2 wereks ago the travel agents rang to say the flight had been cancelled due to a lack of people taking up the offer, it wasn't ideal.
We decided why not do a city break to Marseille instead rather than going there and back within 24 hours. So we set off on Sunday and Yohan fucking Cabaye was on our first flight to Paris which was incredible and he really lovely. We arrived in Marseille in the pitch black on Sunday evening and it felt very uncomfortable and sketchy. Graffiti everywhere, everything closed, locals unable (or perhaps unwilling) to speak English (we were trying French but our GCSE French was being seriously tested) it felt pretty unwelcoming and we wondered what we'd got ourselves in for.
Anyway the sun came up the next day and it was a completely different city - took in the sights of the Port and the Basillica and the locals couldn't have been nicer in the shops and restaurants. I went for a run along the port on the Monday evening and could hear the faint cries "Hello, Hello we are the Geordie boys". Lots of police presence about but everything seemed good natured
Matchday on the Tuesday and we got to Place de la Joilette with about 45 mins to kill - a pop up DJ and bars selling Heineken made it a really fun atmosphere and the French police were happy to take photos with our fans. The metro trip to the stadium was boisterous and despite having to be there 3 hours before kick off (and even the big screen in the stadium was reminding us how long we had to wait until kick off) it went by pretty fast. The Marseille ultras arrived early to set up their display so it kept us entertained. They created an unbelievable atmosphere at the match, probably the best I've ever witnessed. The less said about the match the better but at least we saw us score away in Europe.
The scenes after the match were horrific - as I've said enough already in this thread but the kettling, lack of communication and violence towards our fans was despicable and the French police were very lucky we were in a relatively well-spirited mood as it could have turned really really nasty. Got back to our hotel at 2:30am, a good 3 and a halff hours after the match had finished
We weren't travelling back until Thursday so we decided to go back to the Velodrome on Wednesday just to have a look around (as we weren't allowed on matchday) but also to try and not let our lasting memory of the spectacular stadium of standing kettled in boggy water for 2 hours. The club shop was great and the grafitti/street art outside the stadium was really fantastic.
So yeah that was our trip and aplogies for the long boring post but we've managed to see Newcastle win a trophy at Wembley and see Newcastle play away in the Champions League in the last 8 or so months. Things may not be as rosy as they could be on the pitch but I've had experiences this year I thought I'd never ever see as a Newcastle fan only 4 years ago
