As a wheelchair user who attended the Champions League final in Istanbul last weekend, it was probably the worst experience I’ve ever had at a stadium. And I’ve been kettled outside Wembley with drunk fans pushing past my mum and knocking her over.
When your team reach and win the Champions League final, you want to make memories from it. Unfortunately, Uefa created only nightmares. You have to question whether any thought was put in to considering the experience of disabled fans in the city during the planning process. Getting around Istanbul’s streets was difficult: dropped kerbs to help wheelchair users get across the road were, at best, more like ski slopes and, at worst, nonexistent.
Istanbul’s residents were incredibly helpful when it came to providing support with access and the modern metro system was fantastic and step-free – unlike London’s. Unfortunately Uefa said Manchester City’s fans could not use the system, even though it was a step-free route to the ground.
Although there were some accessible pathways in the pre-match fan park on the outskirts of the city, the route to the shop, say, to buy a programme was across uneven land and you had to stand in a queue for over 45 minutes to make a small purchase. But the queue to get on the bus to the stadium was well-managed for disabled fans.
At the stadium, the fan park could best be described as “independently impassable rubble” or, as one fan put it, “a bomb site”. It was an incredibly uneven surface I struggled to get over even with help from my mum. If I had stopped at any point, it would have been difficult to restart without damaging my wheelchair.
The entrance to the fan park was a logjam, with staff and some fans ignoring my presence because I was out of their eyeline and pushing past me. Once we got in, we made our way to try to get some food. I spotted there was an accessible cashier, so I bought a small vegan burger. But it was a half-hearted attempt at access; after you had placed an order, you had to join a long queue for an inaccessible food counter. Fans who needed water were made to pay for squishy plastic cartons that I couldn’t use without dousing the contents over myself.
When we got into the stadium, we found our seats behind the goal, but the accessible toilets were difficult to find. The first time I actually used the non-disabled toilets because I couldn’t find the accessible ones and there was no one around to show me to it. The second time, a City steward had to take me and a man with a colostomy bag to them. The local stewards were nowhere to be seen.
The match was nervy as a spectator in the crowd, but we were ultimately euphoric after our narrow victory right in front of us. We stayed for around 20 minutes after the match. I would have loved to have stayed longer and soak it all in. But the longer I stayed, the more difficult it would be as a disabled fan to get out.
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We returned to the fan park through a narrow uneven passage thronged with hundreds of fans not really looking where they were going, with no attempt made to control the crowd. Next came the “bomb site” gravel again – only this time, it was pitch-black, too, so it was even more difficult to work out where you were going.
Getting a bus back to the city was a free-for-all. My mother, who was struggling to help me with my electric wheelchair through the darkness and the gravel, spotted some clearly marked “mobility marshals” and approached them calmly to ask for support. Rather than the help she was expecting, she was shouted at to go away.
After 15 minutes trying to find a bus with an accessible space on it – wheeling on gravel I was convinced would break my wheelchair at any moment and leave me stranded – a kind taxi driver convinced a bus driver to lower down the ramp and let me on.
Several hours later, we were dumped at the side of a motorway on the outskirts of the city just before 3am. Had fellow fans not spotted a gap in the fence to get to the nearby metro station, we’d have had to struggle along an inaccessible pavement on the side of a motorway. We eventually made it to the station and a security guard took pity on us and got us on one of the last metros of the night.
It took me several days to recover physically and mentally from what was an inaccessible experience as a wheelchair-using disabled fan. It could have been a lot worse if not for the kindness of many of the locals in Istanbul.
Going to matches in England as a wheelchair user is on the whole a decent experience these days, as a football fan attending games for most of my life and a Manchester City season-ticket holder for 20 years. But why is it that, for the biggest game in club football, our experiences were the worst? I know I’m not the only fan to have been through this. Uefa should be considering the rights of wheelchair users when it is choosing potential candidate cities for Champions League finals, and not as an afterthought, as it seemed to in Istanbul.
The accessibility of a city needs to be looked at when looking at potential options for future Champions League finals. This includes street infrastructure, surfaces in and around fan parks,and the need to train staff to assist disabled supporters at fan parks and stadiums. It’s about time Uefa started getting this right.