If Uefa can charge £600 for a ticket, why can’t they give out free water to fans?

T he block across from us – full of guests of the potato chip brand Lay’s – all had their phones ready to capture the big moment. Manchester City had just defeated Internazionale to become European champions and win the treble. Fans around us cried and hugged as Ilkay Gündogan walked up to lift his third trophy in a month. This was the endpoint of a wild journey for the team that I’ve been watching since my first match in 1992. It was, as a football fan, as good as it could ever possibly get, but almost all I could think about was: how the hell can I get some water?

In an attempt to keep the rival fans apart, beat Istanbul’s impressively stubborn traffic and get everyone to their seats in time, Uefa had insisted that City’s fans start heading to the Ataturk Olympic Stadium, in the far north-west of the city, from as early as 1pm. They were instructed to gather outside a grim “fan park” on the city’s south coast to catch a supposed hour’s shuttle bus to the ground.

When we arrived outside the fan park at about 3pm (with kick-off still seven hours away) a giant queue snaked down the unshaded pavement in the baking heat. Of course the only toilets were located inside the fan park – which meant queuing up, going through airport-style scanners and having our water confiscated (why?) before finding the loos, buying more water and going back out to queue for the buses again.

At the front of that queue our water was taken off us again by the police before we boarded a shuttle bus to another fan park outside the stadium. With traffic gridlocked for the entire 17-mile journey, the ride took more than two hours. For others it was longer. Friends witnessed people peeing in plastic bags: in the end many people were so desperate to