“WE’RE not really here.” That old City chant from the 1980s was never more true than in the Atatürk Olympic stadium on Saturday night.
Surreal and unreal. As Ilkay Gundogan scaled the ad boards and bowled towards us with that huge iconic trophy, I couldn’t quite believe this was happening.
Triumphant Man City players lift the Champions League trophy
And neither could all the laughing, crying, emotionally wrecked fans around me.
Earlier, at the fan park by the stadium, miles out on the edge of this gigantic, teeming city, a place with the weight of all human civilisation on its shoulders, 20,000 lads and lasses from Manchester and beyond partied in the sun.
Tales of tortuous journeys abounded, of three-hour queues for free buses, of madly expensive taxi rides.
But the overwhelming feeling was: Was this whole thing real?
As a City fan since 1969, when as a seven-year-old I watched them win the FA Cup on the first colour TV I’d ever seen, this, for 40 years of my life, was an impossibility.
For 20 years in the ’90s and noughties, we were rubbish.
With the piled-on pain of Man U’s successes.
Of course, since we became rich in 2008 then, seven years ago, got the best manager the game has ever seen, hope and expectation has grown season by season.
Old fans like me were delirious with an FA Cup, and then, a couple of Prem titles.
But, Champions League? You’re having a laugh.
At this new-found highest level we were still Typical City, as several painful exits proved.
Saturday night ended that.
Back to the city on the brilliant all-night metro, we celebrated till the sun came up.
A narrow cobbled alley of bars just off Istiklal Street, Istanbul’s Oxford Street, became City, Champions of Europe Boulevard.
Grown men mimicked flicking monkeys off their backs.
There was champagne and £1 cigars, strong beer and kebabs, flags and flares, banners and anthems, pledges of European Cup tattoos with ‘Istanbul 10.6.23’, like people do for the birth of a child.
And we were really there.
Party time as flares are lit in Istanbul’s Istiklal Street – now nicknamed ‘City Boulevard’
