A group of Liverpool fans traveled to France in a speedboat to watch their side take on Real Madrid in the Champions League final after their Easyjets flights were cancelled.
While many Reds have been hit by travel chaos amid a wave of Easyjet cancellations, a group of a dozen fans had to cross the English Channel from Jersey to Saint Malo on Friday.
Footage showed the men approaching the French coast in windy conditions, blasting Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, as one on the boat remarked: ‘We have to be out of our f ****** heads.”
Paddy O’Toole, who lives in Jersey, said his son’s friends – from Huyton, Merseyside – had had their flights to Paris canceled so had traveled to Heathrow, where they still found nothing.
So they flew to Jersey instead, ‘met us and asked if we could fly them to France,’ Mr O’Toole told the Echo of Liverpool. “We felt sorry for the young boys, so we had to do something.”
Mr O’Toole called a friend who Le Mourier owns a swimming school in Jersey with several speedboats, and soon after the group set off in a 12-person Redbay Stormforce 950.
“We saw a few dolphins on the way and took the train to Rennes and then to Paris. A few more of our friends from Liverpool who live in Jersey heard we were leaving and joined us. We don’t have a ticket between us,” he told the newspaper.
They weren’t the only Liverpool supporters to travel to Paris by inventive means.
Wrexham vlogger Simon Wilson bought the cheapest coach he could find for £5,000 which allowed him to take around 50 supporters from Anfield to the French capital for just £1 each in order to avoid “exorbitant” travel costs.
Describing it as ‘one of the hardest things I’ve ever done’, Mr Wilson said the original coach had to be replaced and the ferry across to Dover had to be pushed back as they were in delay.
“Along the way there were worried faces, people who expected to get to Paris and thought we wouldn’t, but I always had faith, despite all the challenges we faced. I’ve never slept so little in my entire life, I managed a few hours, but it was worth it,” he said.
“Now we can soak up the atmosphere here before the game.”
Tens of thousands of Liverpool fans descended on the French capital as Jurgen Klopp’s side take on 13-time Champions League winners Real Madrid at the Stade de France.
A huge sea of red shirts surrounded the Cours de Vincennes district in the southeast of the city during the morning, where a fan zone was set up.
No less than 50,000 supporters, most of them without tickets, began to gather early in the day in the Cours de Vincennes district, where a fan zone was set up, with balloons thrown in the air, unfurled streamers and flares.
Thousands of Liverpool supporters in the fan zone in Paris
(Jacob King/PA Wire)
The huge sea of red shirts then sang the well-known club anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, club legend Kenny Dalglish took the stage to tell the crowd how good Liverpool’s season had been outstanding.
Easyjet canceled hundreds of flights this week following a software failure and is expected to cancel at least 200 more over the next 10 days, a disruption that is expected to affect some 24 flights a day from Gatwick Airport in London.
The airline said the cancellations were “necessary to provide reliable services during this busy time”.
Additional reports per AP
