THE news of Istanbul being awarded the 2005 Champions League final passed virtually unnoticed among Liverpool supporters.
It was hardly surprising. The date was February 4, 2004 and Gerard Houllier's team was in the midst of a struggle to even qualify for the next season's competition.
One manager and one memorable comeback later, 12 months on Turkey's largest city was suddenly coming to the very forefront of the minds of everyone associated with Anfield.
Victory over Leverkusen left fans rockin' all over the world and a 25-minute blitz then saw off Juventus before an emotionally-charged triumph over Chelsea left supporters searching for their atlases to discover a glaringly obvious fact.
Thus began the mad scramble, not only for tickets, but for a means by which to travel 1,750 miles to the border with Asia for Liverpool's sixth European Cup final.
If Rafael Benitez's players had beaten the odds to reach Istanbul, the fans were going to have to follow suit.
The more wily travel operators laid on a plethora of supporter packages, yet soon they were gobbled up by a ravenous Anfield support that had endured a 20-year fast since previously reaching this stage of the continent's premier club competition.
It meant the remainder were forced to come up with ingenious ways of making their way to the far reaches of Europe.
Some hopped on a train, others in their car, while there were those that opted for a package holiday in a nearby country while travelling cross-border for the match itself.
The rest were left sat in front of a computer monitor, trawling the internet for hours in search of ingenious ways of flying to and from the game while attempting to sidestep the exorbitant fare increases by the ever-scrupulous airlines.
Having been given the green light at a very late stage to aid a senior colleague in Istanbul, your correspondent was one of those chained to a laptop in increasing desperation until finally settling upon a route that, rather than being the cheapest, could instead be regarded as being the least expensive.
So as thousands of Liverpool fans began their mass exodus from John Lennon Airport on the morning of May 25, one half of Daily Post Sport's reporting team was en route to Frankfurt via Manchester.
