Like every Liverpool fan, Brian Cosgrove will be rooting for his club when they take on Real Madrid in the Champions League Cup final in Kiev on Saturday.

Except Brian and his 28-year-old David will be going the extra mile – literally – in support of their beloved club because they will be travelling to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, even though they haven’t got tickets for the showpiece occasion.

And as you’d imagine, it’s some trip.

“We’re flying from Birmingham to Prague on Friday at about 3.30pm,” Brian explained. “Then we’ve got a four-hour wait in Prague before getting to Kiev just before 2am on Saturday morning.

“I’ve organised a taxi to our accommodation which is some 30 miles away in a forest and then another one to take us back back into Kiev before the game.”

The plan is to then watch the game in a fanzone – unless they can buy a couple of tickets.

Either way they’ve booked a taxi to take them back to their hotel at 00.30 after the game and they’ll be back in another taxi seven hours later to take them to the airport.

From there they will fly to Istanbul where they will have a two-hour stopover before catching the flight back to Birmingham and landing at about 4.30pm.

“It’s cost me £1,200 for the airline tickets,” said Brian, a former executive at Zurich Insurance, “and the taxis and hotel are another £700. That’s 2,000 euros for 16 hours in Kiev!”

And if they manage to find a couple of tickets for the game – Brian says he will pay up to 500 euros – the trip will become even more expensive.

It will all be worthwhile, of course, if Liverpool manage to win European football’s premier competition for a sixth time.

Brian, a born and bred Liverpudlian, has seen Liverpool win the cup before.

“I was at Wembley in 1978 when we beat Bruges 1-0,” he said. “I went with my wife Yvonne. We were engaged at the time, the ticket was my engagement present to her!”

Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish got the goal against the Belgians and the game clearly had a lasting impact on Brian because one of his son’s two middle names is Dalglish.

“I was a season ticket holder at Liverpool for 30 years,” said Brian, who lives in Gotherington. “I first started going when the club were in the old second division.

“And I went to the first ever European game at Anfield. That was against Reykyavik and we won 6-1 in front of a crowd of 24,000. We’d already won the first leg 5-0.”

Brian, who was also a season ticket holder at Cheltenham Town for 20 years, fancies Liverpool to upset Ronaldo, Ramos and the like on Saturday.

“Yes, I do fancy us,” he said. “If we can play well and create some chances, I think we can win it.”