A £23 Barcelona ticket and a priceless Newcastle United night
Newcastle United kick off their Champions League campaign with a home game against Barcelona, bringing back memories of a magical night 28 years ago.
It was time for a quiet pint after the loudest of nights at St James’ Park.
This was May 22, 2023, and Newcastle United had qualified for the Champions League for the first time in 20 years.
After reporting on the goalless draw against Leicester City which guaranteed the club a top-four finish, I headed across the road to The Strawberry with some colleagues.
By then, the pub had emptied. Fans had headed home ahead of work in the morning, but, as a football writer, I had only just put my laptop back in my bag after a frantic few hours at the stadium.
The significance of the result was still sinking in, even though I had filed many words on its significance for the club after the final whistle.
Eddie Howe – who had taken over a relegation-threatened team less than 18 months earlier – spoke about his team’s “incredible” achievement in his first full season in charge.
Champions League football couldn’t have been further away as the winless club seemingly edged towards the Championship before Howe’s mid-season appointment as head coach.
As more fans headed home, I was reminded of a magical night at St James’ Park decades earlier.
Newcastle fans had become accustomed again to European football in the 1990s and 2000s.
Kevin Keegan took the club back into Europe, ending a 17-year absence from major continental competitions, after guiding his team to a third-placed finish in the 1993/94 season.
And I was reminded of that European journey on a road and rail trip earlier this year to Ghent, a city I will always associate with Antonie Sibierski. But that is another story.
Back in February, I changed trains at a stunningly-rebuilt station in Antwerp, a city I had not visited since a stunning win for Keegan’s United back in 1994.
The club beat Royal Antwerp 5-0 – Robert Lee famously scored a hat-trick of headers – on its return to European competition after a 17-year absence.
United’s 5,000-strong following watched from a crumbling terrace at one end of the Bosuilstadion.
My coach, full of jubilant fans who could not quite believe what they had seen in Antwerp, travelled to Amsterdam for the night to celebrate the club’s winning return to Europe.
That season’s European journey ended abruptly after an agonising away goals defeat to Athletic Bilbao, due at St James’ Park in November for a Champions League fixture.
Win, lose or draw, those nights on the continent were special for fans, but European football became the exception rather than the rule once Mike Ashley bought the club.
The club had just one campaign in Europe, in 2012/13, during his 14 years as owner. I reported on every one of those seasons, home and away, for the Shields Gazette, and the club spent far too much of that time in the bottom half of the Premier League.
Times have changed.
In the The Strawberry after the Leicester game, I found an old photograph, a blurry screenshot, on my mobile phone and posted it on social media.
It was from a game 27 years ago yesterday.
In the shot, Faustino Asprilla was celebrating his hat-trick goal in a 3-2 win over Barcelona at St James’ Park in front of the Leazes end.
Asprilla had somersaulted after meeting another Keith Gillespie cross with his head, and for those inside the stadium, and especially those sat around me in the front rows as he celebrated, it was an unforgettable moment.
Incidentally, I had paid £23 for my ticket.
Those kind of moments do not come along very often for fans of most clubs. It went down as one of United’s greatest European nights.
During some of the more forgettable Ashley years, Champions League football was a distant dream, though Alan Pardew did get close to qualification when his Hatem Ben Arfa-inspired team finished fifth in 2011/12. The went all the way to the quarter-finals of the Europa League, where they were narrowly beaten over two legs by Benfica, another of this season’s continental opponents.
Pardew had antagonised the Portuguese media ahead of the first leg at the Estadio da Luz with his response to question about how Benfica would fare in the Premier League. He suggested that the club would finish between eighth and 10th, an answer that did not go down well in the city given the stature and history of the Lisbon club.
I reflected on that testy pre-match press conference, and the brutal matchday headlines that followed, in a diary piece when Newcastle returned to the Estadio da Luz for a friendly in the summer of 2022.
In closing, I wondered if Howe could guide the club even higher up the table, beyond the mid-table positions that Pardew had said Benfica might have occupied a decade earlier.
“Newcastle, of course, haven’t been back in Europe since that season, though Champions League football is an aim of the club’s ambitious new ownership team.
“And maybe, just maybe, head coach Eddie Howe can guide the club to European qualification this season.”
Howe’s team, of course, exceeded all expectations that season, finishing fourth.
Today, supporters are looking forward to another visit from Barcelona.
The game kicks off another European adventure for the club, which finished fifth last season after ending a 70-year wait for a major domestic trophy by winning the Carabao Cup.
Speaking yesterday, Howe said: "When we were drawn against Barcelona, it had a magical feel to it. I'm really excited to sample the atmosphere – I think it’ll be an incredible thing again.”
Over the road, The Strawberry are ready. The club’s eight Champions League fixtures are chalked up on a blackboard.
This Newcastle team is a match for anyone on its day, as it showed the season before last when Paris Saint-Germain were beaten 4-1 on another unforgettable European night.
Enjoy!