Back in March 2010 a friend and I were walking along Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in Turin during the afternoon of Fulham’s last 16 first leg game with Juventus. We were on our way to meet other Fulham fans in a bar ahead of the game that evening.
As we were walking down the busy road towards the bar, a black car saw us and started beeping his horn and shouting at us out of the window in Italian. My friend and I decided to keep our heads down, not engage and carry on walking. But the driver carried on shouting at us before he eventually swerved across the road and pulled his car up on the pavement in front of us. He jumped out and said: ‘You English?’ At this point there was not much point trying to pretend otherwise so we sheepishly nodded our heads. ‘Wait there’ he said as he went round to the back of his car, opened the boot and brought out a large, black duffle bag.
At this point I am happy to admit that I had no idea what was in that bag, what he was about to do with whatever was inside that bag and how this whole bizarre episode would end and that I was more than a little concerned about the answers to all of those questions racing around my head at the time.
He brought the bag round to the front of the car, put it on the bonnet and opened it. I still had no idea what was in the bag or what was going to happen next, to my relief - and surprise - what he pulled out of the bag was a Juventus/Fulham half and half scarf and he gestured towards the pair of us with the scarf in his hand and said ‘You want to buy?’
A huge sense of relief rushed through my body and with all the various scenarios that were running through my head, this was not one of them and so I was more than happy to part with €10 for a half and half scarf. Once we had both bought one we told him the pub we were going to and that there would be more Fulham fans there for him to try and sell the contents of his duffel bag to.
A few hours later as we were leaving the pub to make our way to the The Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino for the game, we saw our ‘friend’ outside the pub who by this time had set up a makeshift stall and was flogging the scarfs to every Fulham fan leaving the pub, he saw us and thanked us for telling him where to go and that he had sold out of scarves - so a good day’s work for him in the end - even if it did come at the expense of scaring me to death.
Fulham lost that game 3-1 but won the second leg 4-1 at Craven Cottage and knocked Juventus out of the Europa League on their way to beating Wolfsburg and Hamburg in the next two rounds before eventually losing in the final to Atletico Madrid.
That story is all true and is the only time in my life I have felt obliged to buy a half and half scarf - the other times I have bought them they have been of my own free will.
But the point is that Fulham were playing Juventus. All these years on and that still blows my mind. Because 15 years prior to that game Fulham were knocking around in the old Third Division losing at home to the likes of Scarborough and Doncaster. So I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that I revelled in every second of Fulham’s European adventure back in 2009/10 (and our next, less successful one a few season’s later) by buying half and half scarves, pin badges, programmes and anything else there was to mark this significant achievement in Fulham’s history. And so when people are dismissive of half and half scarves, sneer at them and say they are for ‘football tourists’ I don’t buy into that.
Walking to Craven Cottage earlier this season for a Carabao Cup game with Norwich there was a guy selling scarves for that game, personally I have no interest in buying one of these as it was not a meaningful or special game for me - and thankfully this particular seller was more passive than my Italian ‘friend’ a decade earlier.
But for someone attending their first game or taking their son or daughter to their first match then this could have been a perfect souvenir for them to remember their day out.
Of course to the outsider it looks ludicrous when you see scarves being sold for intense rivalries such as Manchester United and Liverpool and I would love to understand the economics behind creating these scarves for every top flight game and how many need to be sold at Burnley vs Wolves to make a profit.
And while I have not bought a half and half scarf outside of Fulham being in Europe and have no intention or interest in doing so, there are far worse things happening in football than people buying half and half scarves so I’m happy to let them be.
If you have made it this far dear reader and are wondering what I did with all the half and half scarves I bought from Fulham's European adventure, well I can tell you that after sitting in a black bin liner for over a decade, I did manage to get them all sewn together to make one big throw or blanket and it sits over a chair in my flat.
More to read:
Match-going fans are priceless to football - so don't price them out of the game
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