Braga… Day 1 Proper
Having spent an unusual amount of time just hanging around Braga waiting for the Liverpool team to arrive I was finally able to start doing my job on Wednesday at the usual pre-match UEFA press conference and training session.
As with all UEFA club competitions the teams are required to hold a press conference and an open training session for the media to attend 24 hours before the game. This is now becoming the only opportunity to photograph the Reds training, or even a press conference, as the club no longer invite outside media to training sessions or photographers to manager Kenny Dalglish’s pre-match ‘pressers’.
It was good to meet up with some of my friends and colleague who had travelled on the official media trip with Thomas Cook. Whilst I’m here for three nights most of the media are travelling with the team and will only stay for one night, flying back to Liverpool John Lennon Airport immediately after the match. I do envy them that as I have to fly to Gatwick on Friday and then face a lengthy drive back up Britain’s clogged motorways to Liverpool.
As with most European jaunts I like to get public transport rather than just jump into taxies to get around. I’d only just stepped off the number 5 bus from the train station when a black Prius pulled up and the almost unrecognisable face of Alex Morton, a photographer with a London photo agency, emerged from the driver’s window.
Alex gave me a lift up the steep hill to the ground, I showed my press card to a security guard who opened a barrier and waves us through. Not knowing exactly where to go we just followed the small single lane and continued to climb the hill. We eventually emerged onto the pitch.
Now I can certainly say, not since the days of Chelsea’s old Shed End, do you usually park your car on the pitch right behind the goal-line, yet this is where we found ourselves. We briefly considered leaving the car by the corner flag, but with the threat of mis-placed shots from the boots of Christian Poulsen damaging Alex’s hire car it was decided we’d try and find a more ‘formal’ car parking space.
The Estadio Municipal de Braga is a UEFA 4 star stadium and is also extremely unique. It only has two, albeit very large, stand on each side of the pitch. One end is open and looks out over the city whilst the other is a shear rock face that was once the Monte Castro quarry, hence the grounds nickname ‘the Quarry’.
The facilities at the stadium are magnificent. We parked the hybrid Prius underneath the pitch and walked through to a massive press conference room. To put things into perspective, the rooms used for media conferences at Anfield and Melwood are tiny, and for big events we are all packed in like sardines. Even Chelsea, one of the richest clubs in the world, when showing off their record £50m acquisition of a young lad who used to be quite good for us a few seasons back, had to do it in an impossibly tiny room with almost no room for the media to work comfortably.
Braga’s media room was very spacious with a permanent top table on a stage and powerful lights built-in to the ceiling for television. Photographers are banned from using flash guns at Anfield press conferences, but there is no help from TV lighting, so it’s always a pleasure to work in European grounds where they think ahead and put some proper lighting in for press conferences.
The first person from the travelling press pack I saw was my good friend Colin Lane who is Chief Photographger at the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo. Colin greeted me with a massive smile as I arrived the press conference room. It was no surprise to see him here, he loves Portugal and holidays here as much as possible. There was no way one of the other Echo photographers were going to be covering this game!
Last time we were in Portugal together was in Lisbon for the Benfica game and Colin introduced me to the Nata. A sort of custard pastry cake which is a Portuguese speciality. The stadium had a vending machine selling these gorgeous treats so I took the opportunity to have my first Nata of the trip before Kenny’s presser began.
Liverpool put up Raul Meireles along side Kenny Dalglish for the press and he replied to all the questions in Portuguese. There is a massive interest in Meireles in Portugal due to his time playing for FC Porto.
The press conference lasted about half and hour, after which Kenny did some break-outs for radio and national newspapers. We were then given about 20 minutes to shoot the training session in the stadium.
Unusually we were allowed access right to the touchline. At many stadiums we are stuck in the stands quite far from the players. The main focus was Andy Carroll. This was the very first time the media had been given the chance to see the £35m man training with the Reds. Also in the squad were youngsters John Flanagan and Emmanuel Gomis Mendy, and we also had four goalkeepers. The injured Martin Kelly watched the training from the dug-out.
After our allocated time it was back to the press room to select and edit the images and get them sent out to the club web site and national newspapers. There was free wifi at the ground and that made our job so much easier. One of the major headaches doing this job is when there is no internet connection or a flaky 3G service. So long as we can move our images quickly we are generally happy.
I shared a taxi with Carl Markham from Press Association back to the town and found a rather nice restaurant for dinner where we proceeded to put the footballing world to rights. The Liverpool FC press officers and stadium manager were also eating at the same restaurant, so it must have been a good place!
