| |
 Man United fans paint Barcelona red
Posted: Monday May 31, 1999 12:45 PM
BARCELONA (CNN/SI) -- It was a party to end all parties, but then again, it followed a match to end all matches. Hordes of ecstatic Manchester United fans poured on to the streets of Barcelona to celebrate their side's dramatic, last-minute victory in the European Cup final on Wednesday. Spanish police stood by and watched as thousands of jubilant United supporters, dressed in the team's famous red shirts, crammed on to the city's tree-lined Las Ramblas boulevard in a spontaneous explosion of song and beer. Stunned fans of Bayern Munich trudged away, trying to come to terms with the two late goals that had suddenly turned the German team's 1-0 lead into a crushing 2-1 defeat in one of the most astonishing finales in more than 40 years of Europe's top soccer contest. "It's the most exciting thing that has ever happened in my whole life," said United supporter Stephen Lord, from Wales, clutching a large plastic cup filled with beer. "It's the biggest thing to happen to Manchester in my lifetime." Officials in Barcelona deployed more than 5,000 police officers in the city to prevent any outbreak of hooliganism at what had been billed as the highest-risk soccer match in Europe in the last decade. But a police spokeswoman said not one arrest was made during the game, neither among the 90,000 fans in the Nou Camp stadium nor among the thousands of others who watched the game on television in bars throughout the city.
Reuters contributed to this report. | |||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||
