And now for something completely different. That is what Matt Walker, a 40-year-old statistician at the ministry of justice, thought to himself before deciding to set off last month on a unique mission: to attend a top-flight match in all 55 Uefa nations in one season.
“I got the idea when I was reading Stamping Grounds, Charlie Connelly’s book about Liechtenstein’s doomed World Cup attempt in 2002,” says Walker, a Fulham fan and keen amateur photographer, as well as a number cruncher for the government. “That made me wonder whether it would be possible to do all 55 Uefa associations in one season. Being an analyst, I immediately got up last season’s fixtures, hammered them into a spreadsheet and thought: ‘Yes, it’s just about doable’, although there’s no contingency and I haven’t made things easy for myself by choosing a year in which all leagues end early because of the World Cup’.”
So far Walker has ticked off five leagues: his voyage began in Georgia, where he was one of 200 people in a 25,000-seat stadium for Dila Gori’s clash with Lokomotiv Tbilisi, and on Thursday he is in the Aland Islands, the only Swedish-speaking region of Finland and home to IFK Mariehamn, who are attempting to defend the domestic title they sensationally won for the first time last season. “They’re kind of the Leicester City of Finland,” explains Walker.
“The itinerary at the beginning is quite easy because basically I just have to cover the summer leagues and then the rest is shaped around interesting football stories – such as Mariehamn or [Italians] Crotone – and my own travel interests; basically places I’ve always wanted to visit, such as Georgia, which has an intriguing mix of old and new and is sort of a meeting place between Europe and Asia, with a bit of Turkey, Iran and Soviet things, too.”
Georgia, where the league has just switched to a summer schedule, turned out to be the ideal starting place. “Part of my itinerary has been determined by logistics but my general plan is to avoid capital cities and go to smaller places, so I intended to go to watch Dila Gori, who are based about 80km from Tbilisi. But their stadium was under renovation so the game against Lokomotiv was played in Tbilisi, although Dila were technically still the home team. It was a very bizarre atmosphere, with only 200 fans in such a big stadium, but everyone was really friendly. Most of them were friends and family of Lokomotiv players and nobody had to pay because Dila reckoned it would cost more money to print tickets than they would have raised from selling them.”
That was a welcome bonus for Walker, whose budget provides for an average spend on tickets of £14 per match (“that will all come crashing down when I do the Premier League,” he quips before explaining that he has not yet chosen a destination in England – “maybe Huddersfield, Brighton or Bournemouth” – and that his commitment to financial rigour extends beyond admission prices: “I made myself pasta and sauce three days in a row in Iceland because I couldn’t afford to eat in the restaurants”).
Georgia was enriching in other ways, too. “It’s a really interesting place and I talked to a lot of people who gave me an insight into their football culture. And I really enjoyed the game I saw because the style of football was unlike any I’d seen. It’s very technical but incredibly unathletic. Georgians tend to have amazing close control but with both teams I watched, it looked like players had a couple of cigarettes at half-time. You always get open spaces late on in matches but after about 65 minutes of this one you could have driven buses through some of the spaces. I must check if a Georgian team has ever met an Icelandic one in European competition because I’d be intrigued to see that: I suspect fitness would beat finesse.”
Having wanted to visit Georgia for many years, Walker is set to go there twice more over the coming months. “You can’t go directly between Armenia and Azerbaijan because technically they’re still at war with each other so you have to go through to Georgia. And there’s no transit between Armenia and Turkey either so you have to go back through Georgia again.” Walker can plan for those peculiarities but is aware that the rest of his route could be strewn with unforeseeable hurdles. Even a match that he thought would be straightforward could turn out to be problematic, as the future of the club he intends visiting in the Republic of Ireland, Bray Wanderers, has suddenly been thrown into doubt by financial turmoil.
“All across the continent fixtures are always getting changed because clubs go far in cup competitions or because of less positive developments, and there will also be political instability and so on,” says Walker. “A colleague said to me that he doesn’t want to hear about all the nice things I see and do, just about all the things that go wrong. He wasn’t being callous, he just thinks that will make for a more entertaining read.” Walker is hoping to attract a publisher for the book he intends writing about his adventure.
As for nice things he has seen, well, that is a subjective judgment. “The atmosphere at matches in Iceland is very family-oriented; everyone goes with their kids and everyone sings together and goes to the bar together afterwards,” says Walker. “But chatting to one of the guys from Stjarnan, he said the top teams are trying to do things to create more of a rivalry, which is quite different from many parts of Europe, where teams are trying to take the heat out of rivalries.”
Rivalry flourishes in Norway, apparently. “At Brann Bergen they have a standing area for the hardcore fans and some of them were kind enough to invite me in, so I kind of felt it would be rude not to sit down when they all started chanting: ‘Sit down if you hate Rosenborg,’” he says. “That was another reason why the start of the journey has been relatively easy: in most places I’ve been so far, everyone speaks English so they’ve been able to translate chants for me and tell me about the culture. Still, it’s a bit of a challenge trying to take notes during a game while watching the match, talking to fans and taking photos. In the Faroe Islands I put my camera on the seat beside me while I was writing notes and a defender hoofed the ball into the stands and missed it by about a metre!
“The Faroes has probably been the lowest standard of football I’ve seen so far, the one place where I thought: ‘Some of my mates might do alright here.’ But, in fairness, conditions there are tough even though they all play on artificial pitches. Matches are often called off because it’s just too blustery to play and, when they do play, balls often get lost into the sea.”
Having attended a match in Sweden on Monday, Walker will watch IFK Mariehamn host Ilves on Friday – that’s fourth against fifth in the Veikkausliiga, people! – before jumping on a ferry to Estonia. “This is a three-game week,” he explains. “Since there are no top-flight matches on international weekends, I’ve only about 40 weekends of action during the season so I have to take in midweek matches.” Because of the need for flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, Walker will conclude his odyssey somewhere in the Balkans.
“That is the area of Europe with the highest concentration of top-flight teams. It would be good to end there so that, when pressure to meet the deadline is on, I can dash across to another country if fixtures get cancelled. I think that’s the best way to do it, although I initially thought it would be good to finish in San Marino, as I thought that’s probably where I’ve got the best chance of getting a game. Like if there was a sudden outbreak of influenza, I might get on as a sub.”
You can follow Matt’s adventure and find out how much goes wrong and whether he does get a game somewhere by checking out:
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