Europa League: backwaters awash with minnows and their Cinderella stories

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/jul/23/europa-league-minnows

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If it had been the first goal of a World Cup, a European Championship or a Premier League season, it would be readily recollected by millions. Instead, 525 souls were sunning themselves in the 18,000-capacity Ta’Qali Stadium in Valletta, Malta, when Stanley Ohawuchi received the ball 39 minutes into the 2014/15 Europa League season. He was 10 yards inside the Ferencvaros half and, helped by a stealthy block from a team-mate, span the first opponent.

That was all the momentum he needed: eight seconds later, he had evaded three more and Sliema Wanderers were, after a genuinely fine demonstration of skill and purpose, ahead via the first goal in this year’s competition. On the face of things it was a decidedly more successful endeavour than that of Josip Drmic, who was missing glaringly for Switzerland against Argentina at around the same time in São Paulo; Ohawuchi, though, had no guarantees that the right people had their eyes trained on a dot in the Mediterranean.

“It’s my type of play you know, getting on the ball and running with it like that – it’s what I do best,” he tells the Guardian. Sliema Wanderers went on to narrowly lose the tie, 3-2 on aggregate, and there is an element of frustration that Ohawuchi – a 24 year-old Nigerian who scored 21 league goals last season – may have been shouting into a vacuum.

“It was unfortunate to lose in the first qualifying round, and even more that it was played during the World Cup,” he says. “That was an unusual situation, and I know more people would have been watching if we had gone further. I just hope that what I did in that game, and everything I’ve done before, can make others notice me. It’s my dream to play in the group stage in future and I’m sure I can score goals at a higher level. Malta is not a big league so European football is a big chance to show other clubs what you can do.”

To an extent, it has still worked: for one thing, Ohawuchi is aware that Ferencvaros expressed interest in him after his performances against them. The Europa League’s status as a fringe market for Europe-based talent seems assured regardless of wider public interest, and the value to its participants certainly belies its direct relevance to the punter. From 75 given attendances at first qualifying round games (three were not declared), the average was 2,185.

The figure is skewed by an attendance of 15,184 in Aberdeen and gates of 14,000, 11,200 and 7,200 in an enthusiastic Kazakhstan. Twenty-seven of the fixtures – more than a third – were watched by three-figure crowds; the lowest numbered 150 when Sant Julià, from Andorra, hosted suburban Belgrade side Cukaricki.

The point is not to disparage: many of the competing nations at this stage are tiny; others are floundering economically; some have little matchgoing culture; a frustrating number suffer from the fact that their stadiums fall below Uefa standards and have to host ‘home’ games elsewhere; all may legitimately point to the cannibalising influences of more prestigious summer competitions and bigger domestic leagues. There is something of wonder in these early stages, and the lengths to which clubs from the nether regions of Uefa’s rankings are obliged to go for a haphazard celebration of personal achievement, high hopes and low expectations.

Brandur Jacobsen is president of Faroese side Vikingur and, like the rest of the club’s staff, works on a voluntary basis. It takes around 50 of them to prepare for a European home game, which is some undertaking given that Vikingur’s tie against the Latvian side Daugava Daugavpils was watched by the first qualifying round’s lowest aggregate attendance – just 542. There is a certain relish in the way Jacobsen offers his description of a round trip from the Faroes to Jurmala – the city, 154 miles from their home, where Daugava must play their European home games – for the teams’ second-leg meeting on 10 July.

“The logistics are harder for us than for most other clubs,” he says. “We almost always have to take two flights to get anywhere, and that means more expense for us.

“This time, we left the Faroe Islands on the Monday evening. We flew to Copenhagen, stayed there for one night and continued to Riga on the Tuesday, which gave us two days before the game. We played on the Thursday night, flew out of Latvia on the Friday morning and had a flight back home from Copenhagen that night. But we hit a problem: there was thick fog in the Faroes and we only have one small airport, right between the mountains. We couldn’t land, so had to turn right back to Copenhagen. So we spent another night there, the fog cleared, and finally we came back to the Faroes on the Saturday afternoon.”

They did so in the knowledge that, for the third time in their four Europa League campaigns, they would be playing in the second qualifying round. Andreas Olsen’s 88th-minute goal saw to that in front of 200 Latvian spectators and no small number of trees. The expedition had lasted five days; when a Premier League side contests a Champions League away game, its delegation has typically made it there and back in little over 36 hours.

Jacobsen is reticent when asked exactly how much the five days cost. The outgoings will have eaten out of a Uefa ‘solidarity payment’ that is designed both to reward participating clubs and to cover their expenses – a grant without which a sizeable proportion would, you suspect, struggle to fulfil their away fixtures. Vikingur and Daugava both received 120,000 euros for their first qualifying round encounter; the Faroese club has received a subsequent 130,000 euros to fund its tie with Tromso, the second leg of which will be played in Norway on Thursday.

Ends are met, and Uefa stress that practical support in ensuring fixtures are fulfilled is constantly available, too. But the big picture for Vikingur, explains Jacobsen, is less about margins and logistics. The club was formed from a merger of two teams on the archipelago’s second-largest island, Esturoy, in 2007, but its catchment area of 2,000 is one tenth of that enjoyed by teams from the capital, Torshavn. Even in this relative twilight world, there are different levels of minnow; different measures of achievement.

“The challenge is not just for our players, but for our small community,” he says. “To show that we can work together to beat a team from a city of 100,000 people in Latvia, or 180,000 in Finland [they also defeated Turku last year] is something special and it reflects on everyone – reflects on all of us Vikings from the Faroe Islands in fact. It’s something we can be very proud of; it’s a big effort from everybody here.”

Vikingur’s journey to Tromso, which they will make with the tie poised at 0-0, should be more comfortable than their Baltic mission. Jacobsen expects the club to charter an aeroplane for the first time, with demand already close to being met among local supporters and media for the rest of its 100 seats.

Incrementally, they are finding ways to make what they believe can be the competitive difference to take them into uncharted waters. If, by the time the third qualifying round comes around, Vikingur are seeking wings again and Ohawuchi is running at defenders in Hungary’s OTP Bank Liga or better, the benefits of persevering while the world’s collective head is turned will be on show to an increasingly engaged audience.