And we’re back with more of the beautiful game! And my quest to get to as many stadiums in London as possible continues, this time with Craven Cottage, where Fulham will host the mighty Liverpool in the 2nd leg of the EFL Cup semi-final. In the 1st leg, Liverpool beat Fulham 2-1. This match would decide who moved on to the final. This will be the smallest Premier League stadium I’ve yet visited, so it should be a good time.

Fulham F.C.’s namesake is the borough of London where they are located, which is also called Fulham. Fulham is actually a really pretty area! And I don’t know that I had ever explored much of it before I came to this game. Little did I know when I first arrived at this game, but I had a very long walk ahead of me through Fulham waiting for me later that night. You can see the location in the broader context of London here. Craven Cottage is right on the banks of the River Thames, which made the walk from the tube station to the stadium quite scenic.

Craven Cottage seems to occupy a weirdly tiny amount of land when looking at the map, but the stadium itself still feels quite imposing. After experiencing the huge scale of London Stadium and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, this felt pretty old-world. In fact, Craven Cottage was built in 1896, making it the oldest football stadium in London. It’s clear that there have been certain upgrades made since then, but the front of the stadium you’ll see from the street is not one of them. It feels like something out of Peaky Blinders. And the British police officers on horses only added to the “old world” atmosphere.

It was immediately exciting to step through the gates and see the green of the pitch. It was sort of a winding journey to get to our seats, but when we got there, it turned out that our seats were AMAZING! We were literally 3 rows behind the goal. But we weren’t directly behind the goal, we just slightly to the right, which meant that when a shot on goal was a narrow miss, we were in the line of fire. This is something I found out in a hurry, because during warm up, Harry Wilson hit a howler just wide of the net. Bernd Leno dove for it, but it suddenly became clear that this ball was head straight for me! I had my phone in one hand and there was clearly no time to dispose of it before impact, so I took my free hand and punched the ball away. Those balls are HARD!

So that was an exciting start to the match.

Under every seat in the stadium were black and white flags, as well as signs that read “COME ON FULHAM.” When the match was set to begin, we all waved the flags and there were some crazy pyrotechnics on the field. It was a really electrifying atmosphere! Fulham is not a team that tends to be in serious contention for a trophy, so this was a big match for them.

Once the match started, as much as the atmosphere was fervently supportive of Fulham, I was mostly just trying to soak up the experience of seeing Liverpool play at such close range. It had just recently been announced that Jürgen Klopp would be stepping down as the Liverpool coach, so I was lucky to see one of his last games in action. Unfortunately, Salah was away playing at AFCON during this, but that still left the likes of Darwin Nunez, Virgil van Dijk, Diogo Jota, Cody Gakpo, Luis Diaz and World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister in the mix.

Luiz Diaz got one past Bernd Leno early on in the match, so the atmosphere became relatively subdued after that. Things came back to life a bit in the second half when Andreas Pereira had a close one off the post. Finally, in the end, Fulham did score 1 point thanks to a late brace from Issa Diop, but even though this game ended in a draw, it was not enough to offset Fulham’s point deficit from the previous match, and so they were eliminated on aggregate point totals. Liverpool would go on to win the EFL Cup this year, so it’s a respectable loss for Fulham.

However, what I did not find respectable were the antics of the victorious Liverpool fans after the game. When the final whistle blew, the crowd’s celebrations involved a massive sign that read “IMAGINE BEING US.” 👎

As per usual, before I share the photos, I will share a few quotes. The Fulham fans around me were not the most articulate lot, but they were far and away the most profane I have yet experienced. Here are a few quotes I wrote down, unedited.

“We’re bum fucked!”

“Scouse cunts!” (Scouse, or ‘Scouser’ is a term that refers to somebody from Liverpool… from an outsider’s perspective it seems like it might be somewhat derogatory, but apparently it’s not. “Cunt” is definitely derogatory though 😂)

“Stop fucking winge-ing ya tart!”

And then there were the chants. You don’t really get the full picture when you just see the words alone, but here are the words anyway…

“Harvey Elliot you warbler!” (Harvey Elliott is a Liverpool player)

“You’re just a shit Andy Carroll!” (Honestly I’m not sure I understand this one)

“Oh when the Whites go marching in” (sung to the tune of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ — also, it’s probably important to note that white is their kit color, not their skin color 😅)

“We’re not Barcelona SHIT (x2) We’re Fulham FC”

“You’re supporting fucking shit”

“We are Fulham, super Fulham, FFC, fuck Chelsea!” (This is a referenece to the Chelsea football club, Fulham’s neighbor and arch rival)

“Who’s the Scouser in the black” (you know what a Scouser is now)

And now, pictures. There are some VERY notable players running around on that field.

Set VPNs to the UK to watch these match highlights 👇👍

When all was said and done, Fulham were eliminated while Liverpool went on to win it all. We exited the stadium and the Fulham and Liverpool fan sections converged at the exits like a deck of cards being shuffled. It’s easy to see how these games could get dangerous with the rowdy antics of competing fans! However, hooliganism seems to be a thing of the past, and the only cross words I heard amongst this crowd were Fulham fans grumbling that “Scousers are weird.” Here are some pictures from the exit procession.

From here, as often seems to be the case with this games, the London metro officials had apparently seen fit to close the nearest tube stations, presumably to help disperse the crowd and ease the load on public transportation. It’s honestly so annoying. So I got to take a nice long walk through Fulham to the next-closest tube station! I put the location into Google Maps, but in the end I didn’t even need to look at my phone because I found myself in a never-ending line of football fans walking along sidewalk like a chain of ants approaching something sugary. Fulham really is a lovely borough.

That’s all for now, but we’ll be back in action soon with more football. And this next one promises to be REALLY cool. Stay tuned.