Bologna fans are going to every length imaginable to support their team against Aston Villa this evening.
La Repubblica report on their efforts to get to Villa Park for tonight’s Europa League quarter-final clash. It’s very much a case of planes, trains and automobiles.
Historic upset
Bologna fans are dreaming of a ‘historic upset’ in the game, with Aston Villa holding a commanding 3-1 lead from the first leg.
And that dream is shown in the number’s going, with 2,200 making the trip to Birmingham via. Some fans have departed via Marconi Airport heading south—stopping over in Brindisi before heading to London and completing their journey with a FlixBus ride to Birmingham.
But some fans seem to have dismissed a direct flight from Verona as too easy and ‘too lacking in imagination’. Instead, a large portion of the fanbase have taken various routes on their ‘journey of hope’, creating a crisscross in the skies of Europe.
The Italian fans have ‘spared no effort’ to get to Villa Park, with the entire city determined to believe in the comeback.
Temporary travel agents
It’s an ‘exodus’ to Birmingham, evoking memories of the club’s European adventures of the past when they ‘invaded’ Liverpool. A ‘frantic scramble’ for tickets followed. Fans snapped them up within half a day of sales opening.
Then came the rush to plan. Skyrocketing airfares within minutes made planning far more difficult. That led to more creative plans to keep costs down.
For organized fan groups, a charter flight carrying 180 people is scheduled to depart from Marconi Airport on Thursday morning, with the return trip set for Friday.
Everyone else has been left to create a ‘dizzying array’ of individual travel plans to get to Birmingham for this evening’s game.
Flights from Paris or Barcelona are options, while Malta is another stopover option. That journey, spanning 5,000 kilometres, ist just shy of the distance from Lisbon to Newy York.
On the way back, some will be stopping in Ibiza or Palma de Mallorca. Other circuitous routes involve layovers in Catania, Sofia, and Tirana. The fact is, they’re all ‘true optimists’ believing in the unlikely in Europe.
