'Adventure Independiente' - Lars Day in Paris

Yes, I purposely did that 'Lars Day' title cos we realised that the headlines in the papers from UK are really good. We all know larsson played really well. And this being his last game in a barca shirt, one headline screamed 'Lars Tango In Paris'. Isn't that brilliant?

18 May 2006

Last day in Paris. A really relaxing day. We did a nice, slow lunch by a roadside cafe with French red wine. Ahhh... This is the life... It would have been better if my company was Mrs Blog though. Dhanesh, you were ok only... :)

Why Adventure Independiente? Well, here's what happened before heading off to the airport. Dhanesh and I made friends with this group of really friendly Argentines. One of them saw the Arsenal badge on my polo shirt and offered his sympathies. They were impressed that we flew all the way round the world for this game. We told them about Arsenal and they naturally told us about their fav team. Not River Plate or Boca Juniors but Independiente...! Well, what happened next was that they offered their Argentina wrist bands in exchange for our Arsenal ones! It was totally unexpected but was a pleasant moment. So we've gonna 'adopt' Independiente as our club in Argentina. And now Arsenal has 2 new fans...

We were almost scared shitless! (pun intended) We asked this newspaper vendor to translate a headline we saw. He said 'Henry iz going to Barca.' For three hours, we walked around Paris totally devastated. Then Singapore Gooner, Elvin, texted me the correct info: Henry signs another 4 years! Trust the damn French to give us such a scare. Anyway, here's how much we Gooners think of our captain and possibly Arsenal's finest player.

Had we won the CL Finals, we may have lost Henry forever. So would I had wanted a night of European glory? Or another 4 years of silky, magical and mesmerising football by the irresistable Titi Henry? On hindsight, I agree with Bernard and we'd rather take the latter and watch how Arsenal continue to dish out Joga Bonito.

That's the end of our 'Adventure Independiente'. We've learnt quite a bit of stuff. For a successful football final to happen, you need two most exciting teams playing against each other (Arsenal is mandatory). You need serve 0% alcohol beer that will not let you feel a thing but only make you piss loads. You need lots of scary looking police personnel. You need lots of crazy fanatic football fans to colour up the place. You need a dumb organiser that only gives out less than half the number of tickets of the stadium's capacity to the clubs and giving the rest to their own people, who may not be fans. You need a few thuggish touts that charge insane prices for match tickets which they could have stolen. You need to have beautiful looking hosts like this sweet young thing... You need to have some celebrities, like a German tennis player (what the hell was he doing at a football game?). But most of all, you need three crazy fans who would fly 17 hours halfway round the globe, without match tickets, to watch a 90 minute football game.

Once you have all that, you know that your football finals will be a huge success. 'Adventure Independiente!!!'

And with Henry commiting his future with the Gunners, our trip really ended in a great 'Triomphe'!