Baku is a serious football trip that demands military precision

This does not yet feel like your average European football trip and I suspect that won’t change the closer we get to the Europa League final kick-off

As Arsenal correspondent for The Independent, my football season began back in August, when I travelled from London to Ireland to watch Unai Emery’s fledgling side take on Chelsea in a money-spinning friendly at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium.

It was a peculiar feeling, picking up my passport and jumping on a plane to watch two clubs from just down the road play against one another in a match hundreds of miles from home. Little did I know that, by the end of the season, an hour-long flight to see these sides square off would seem like child’s play.

My journey to Baku began at 6pm on Monday evening: just enough time to ensure that I would be in Azerbaijan for the Europa League final press conferences some 24 hours later. That’s an awful lot of effort to hear Unai Emery talk for 20 minutes.

I reached the city via a less than ideal five-hour layover in Istanbul in the early hours of the morning – colleagues from other newspapers meanwhile arrived from countries as far afield as Bulgaria, Georgia and Russia.

This does not yet feel like your average European football trip and I suspect that won’t change the closer we get to kick-off. Unusually, there was no chanting from the small pockets of red-eyed supporters that I saw milling around Istanbul airport. There wasn’t much drinking going on, either. Instead, those fortunate enough to follow their team to the “Baku-beyond” staggered around with hollow expressions and a cup of coffee in either hand. This isn’t a beano – this is a serious trip to be undertaken with military precision.

Not that you should feel too much sympathy for anybody fortunate enough to be out here complaining, myself included. It takes an awful lot of money to follow a football club both home and abroad and those who have travelled still have the opportunity to watch their side make history.

It’s the fans who aren’t here that we should feel truly sorry for. The fans who have been outpriced from watching a club they have given so much to attempt to win one of the biggest trophies in the game. And while Uefa may have it in their power to move a match thousands of miles away for whatever reason they deem necessary, they will never be able to transport the atmosphere, the emotion, the soul.

One thing’s for certain: I will never complain about a quick 60-minute jaunt to Dublin again.

Yours,

Luke Brown

Arsenal correspondent