Just back in the hotel after attending a Standard Chartered event in a shopping mall in downtown KL. To describe it as total madness would be an understatement. The players were litterally mobbed as they made their way to the stage with thousands of fans rushing towards them to try and touch their heroes. Andy Carroll and Jamie Carragher proved to be the most popular players present while Raul Meireles looked to be having fun - out of all the players, he's definitely one of the ones who seems to be enjoying the Beatles-like hysteria that follows the team everywhere. When the traditional drummers were doing their ear-splitting thing ringht in front of the players, he was getting right into it - doing a dance for the watching fans and flashing cameras. In the absolute chaos of trying to get back to the waiting cars after doing an in-bank appearance, LFC TV Online's Mark Volante was left behind with no money and no phone (he had it stolen a few days ago) as the police needed to get the players to the mall. Lucky for him, we got caught in traffic and he was picked up wandering down the street in the direction of the mall. Look out for a video from him showing the crazy scenes later.
Oh, and if you're on Facebook, check out my (very shaky) Flip video of the fans at the stadium last night - great scenes here ion Malaysia: http://on.fb.me/r2GlUq (You better watch it, it only took 17 hours to upload on my wifi connection here in the hotel!)
Friday July 15 14:30 - Claire Rourke
We're just on our way to an adidas event with Dirk Kuyt, Charlie Adam, Raul Meireles and Jack Robinson.
The roads are extremely busy, but thanks to our police escort, who are all but pushing cars out of the way on the journey, we should arrive on time for a Q&A and signing session with local media and adidas competition winners.
Friday July 15 13:57 - Paul Rogers
Quick update: Off to Standard Chartered appearance in shopping centre with Steve Clarke, Jamie Carragher, Andy Carroll, John Flanagan, Maxi, Raul Meireles and Soto. Up to a thousand fans expected so should be good. Also, just seen the room being kitted out for anothjer Standard Chartered event tonight - looks's brilliant. Will post a picture later.
Friday July 15 11:30 - Paul Eaton
We've spent an enjoyable morning at an adidas soccer clinic with the community coaching team.
We arrived in the midst of pouring rain - the heavens had truly opened - and we all thought we would be in for a soaking, but thankfully nobody's spirits were dampened by the weather and more than 30 kids from the local area were given the chance to further their football education with a series of practice drills devised by our coaching team.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the morning was arriving at the venue and bumping into John Barnes. Upon spotting us, he laughed: "I only live five minutes away from your offices and we fly halfway around the world to meet one another!"
Barnes is over here working on the Copa America for TV and will also be taking up co-commentary duties on Liverpool's friendly match with a Malaysia XI tomorrow night.
Once again it was brilliant to see so many kids having such a good time and clearly enjoying being given this once in a lifetime opportunity to learn the Liverpool Way.
Just got up after a much-needed first lie in of the trip – not going to bed on Wednesday night killed me - and feel a million times better. Anyway, here’s last night’s blog update which I couldn’t post due to connection problems:Not long finished eating dinner in the hotel - food was proper nice - and am about to try and quickly knock together a little video montage of the fans from training earlier tonight. Paul Eaton wasn't exaggerating in his update earlier – the crowd scenes at the stadium were phenomenal. I’ve certainly never seen a Mexican wave amongst fans at a training session before but then again, I can’t ever remember seeing almost 38,000 fans at a training session before. From the minute the players walked out until the moment they boarded their bus to return to the hotel, the singing, screaming and cheering didn’t let up. It was like we’d just walked into the stadium with our first league title for 20 years! Very impressive. Saw loads of kids – and even some babies too – being held aloft by their proud parents. Always nice to see the next generation of Reds already been groomed to support the greatest club on the planet – although, one dad was getting so carried away holding his baby up for me to film on my Flip camcorder that he didn’t realise the only thing I was filming was a screaming baby with a look of absolute horror on her face. Still, at least the dad enjoyed the moment!
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