Cup Tie! Cup Tie! Galatasaray versus Arsenal, Semi-Final European Champions League. Winner to meet Barca in the final in Munich! The biggest prize in Europe! The stands slowly fill, body by body, obliterating the massive CIMBOM written in red seats on white along the home stands. The Arsenal fans have been admitted early to the visitors’ end of the stadium where they have draped their banners over the crash barriers and rehearse their songs in the ebb-and-swell oceanic chant of English football supporters. Some have already stripped off their shirts. Turkish drummers and horn sections blare back. The Arsenal fans stab their fingers at them and bellow: you you you! Advertising scrolls up the pitchside hoardings and across the big screens in the stands. The media is here; television trucks parked up along the main road, celebrity pundits half visible in the glass tank of the gallery, a dozen different commentators down on their benches, photographers lolling around the goal-line. Cameramen practise sending their flittercams on strafing runs across the stadium while the touchline cameras shriek up and down.
