When we were promised Champions League football in five years by our then co-owners, it wasn’t something I bought into – and with good reason. It’s been more than five years and we’ve not played Champions League football, so my instincts in that regard have been pretty sound.
What I didn’t expect to happen, however, was a fairytale three years of outstanding European football in the Europa and Conference Leagues. I did not at all expect to get accustomed to Thursday night games against European opposition, and to see my team win a European trophy for the first time in my lifetime.
It was all beyond my wildest dreams – and yet somehow it’s been a reality for West Ham fans for three magnificent seasons. It’s pretty universally accepted that after losing to the irritatingly unbeatable Bayer Leverkusen, and winning very few league games in 2024, we aren’t going to be playing European football next season.
It could be a depressing and devastating time, but after what’s been a hectic whirlwind of three consecutive quarter-finals in European competitions and one exhausted shoestring squad, there’s no looking back in anything other than bursting-at-the-seams pride. Sure, there were some challenging times and disappointing moments, but even the European ‘lows’ aren’t really lows, because they happened while we were regularly playing in Europe.
One area of fairly consistent ‘lowness’ was the standard of referring – which was nice really, as it gave us something other than the standard of refereeing in the Premier League to be disappointed about. Given it’s a completion full of the second best referees from many countries, it had potential to be good, but if I had a pound coin for every time we got a ref in a knockout stage who was both terrible for West Ham and independently accused of corruption, I’d have three pound coins – which, as the saying goes, isn’t a lot, but it’s odd that it’s happened thrice.
The referee for our Bayer Leverkusen quarterfinal, Jose Maria Sanchez Martinez, has been investigated by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office for buying a luxury apartment in cash. The referee for our 2022 quarterfinal against Lyon, Felix Zwayer, was involved in and convicted of match fixing, and the referee for the 2022 semifinal against Eintracht Frankfurt, Jesus Gil Manzano, was suspended by La Liga and accused of corruption in March this year.
Two of those refs sent our players off; the other made for especially uncomfortable viewing against Leverkusen given how much of his poor decision making and bias seemed to revolve around Mohammed Kudos and Michail Antonio specifically. The highs of the competition were fortunately far more enjoyable for the Hammers – and of them, there are many.
Reaching the quarterfinals in every year was a huge achievement, especially given how much of our previous-but-recent years involved getting beaten by Astra Giurgiu. Reaching the semi-finals in the first year was an even bigger achievement, especially given our determination to go down to ten men in both the quarter- and the semi-finals, with Aaron Cresswell being sent off in both games.
Of course the greatest high in Europe was winning our first major trophy in 43 long years – and the first trophy in this writer’s lifetime. Being actual Champions of Europe, well, the third division of sorts, was never something that I considered as being possible for us – and yet we did it.
It happened; there are photos and written articles as proof. We paraded a trophy through the east end of London, starting from the Boleyn, so that everyone remembered where we came from and honoured those that paved the path to European glory. This is something that I did not believe would be part of my West Ham supporting lifetime – but it was.
I really did get used to games on Thursdays and Sundays; Saturdays were for non-European clubs only, such as the likes of Bournemouth and Burnley and Tottenham. But you can’t continually succeed in something without continued investment. We actively weakened our squad in the January 2023 transfer window, and when the decision to do that was made, we all but signed our Brexit declaration to come out of Europe.
Selling two of our best players and goalscorers in Europe, Said Benrahama and Pablo Fornals, and actively choosing not to replace them, was criminal. The reason we won’t be playing in Europe after this season is because the club did not wish to invest in continuing to play in Europe, nothing more, nothing less.
Our exit has come at the right time to rebuild, as it wasn’t sustainable on a skeleton squad, and our league position and treatment room will benefit from a little mini-break from Europe. It will be hard to readjust to civilian, or perhaps ‘peasant’, life after three genuinely wonderful years that made everyone truly proud of our team.
I’ll miss the nights under the lights and the excitement of getting drawn in a different country, the fun of getting to see us play against someone other than all the usual suspects, with the note that we seemed to have played half of Germany in just ‘drei’ years. It’s harder to keep top-notch players without the promise of European football, but even then, the Europa League wasn’t enough to keep our then captain on our books past this season.
There’s all to play for next year, and, not to sound all Jurgen-Klopp here, given that we had to play an incredible volume of games this season, our chance of re-qualification through league position in 2024/25 with far less games to play has got to be strong. This season, we have played 49 games, and as a result have had the fourth lowest time in the league to recover between games, averaging just 126 hours between games according to statisticians Opta.
Tottenham, who notably did not play in Europe this season, have played just 35 games – 14 fewer than us – and have 172 hours to recover between days. Those hours add up, and Spurs have certainly benefited this season with an extra two days per game to recover. All good things come to an end eventually, and this is definitely a ‘don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened’ scenario.
I’m genuinely sad that this remarkable journey is over, but if we want this again, it is in our grasp to get it. We know we can compete in Europe – we did compete in Europe – and we won in Europe. So for now, Europe, auf wiedersehen, au revior, and arrivederci – but know this: we will see you again soon.
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