In a historic week for the little Kidderminster Harriers, the club’s management was not only concerned with increasing space for media professionals or figuring out what to do with the huge demand for tickets. There are other important questions to be answered.
How many liters of beer will we need? And potato chip bags? And pies?
In the previous phase of the FA Cup, the FA Cup, the oldest football championship in the world, everything sold out before the end of the game. This cannot happen again. Even more now.
The semi-professional team (more for the “semi” than for the “professional) of the English sixth division welcomes West Ham, from the Premier League, for the fourth phase. In a single match and elimination, they will play at home, at Aggborough Stadium. capacity is for 6,444 people, but only 3,000 can be seated.
The match will be this Saturday (4), at 9:30 am (Brasília time).
When the London 2012 Games ended, West Ham inherited the Olympic Stadium, which can hold 80,000 spectators and was built for 486 million pounds sterling.
“I just did an interview with Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer. It’s what we call cup magic. It’s the ability this tournament has to make teams like ours dream they can beat giants,” said Russell Penn, 36, head coach. from Kidderminster, to leaf.
Former England top scorers, Lineker and Shearer are respectively presenter and commentator on BBC’s “Match of the Day”, the most traditional and followed sports program in the United Kingdom.
If there were no imponderables in football, Kidderminster shouldn’t even be in the competition right now. In the third phase, he starred in the biggest upset of the current edition. It eliminated Reading, from the Championship, the second division.
“The city has 55,000 inhabitants and is in an uproar. You can feel the excitement of the fans in the streets. It is a great moment in the club’s history. Let’s seize the occasion. We like to have the ball and we want to play. We are not going to defend ourselves.” guarantees Penn, a former player on the team who became the coach in 2019.
The dream of every Kidderminsters in British football is to see the draw pit him against the big and away. It may be bad from a sporting point of view, but from a financial point of view, it’s like winning the lottery. A match against Manchester United at Old Trafford or against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium could represent money to keep the club in business for a year.
When playing at home, the team from the West Midlands region will have part of the box office of their stadium and 110 thousand pounds (R$ 795 thousand) paid by the BBC for the live broadcast. Part of the money will be used in the costs of carrying out the confrontation. It will be necessary to quadruple the number of employees and security guards.
“West Ham will find a different environment than what they are used to. Small locker room, tight field. For them, it will be an experience and something that can be to our advantage,” adds Penn.
In third place and in the playoffs zone for access to the fifth division, Kidderminster is going through a good phase. It has won 16 of the last 21 points it has played. The technician makes it clear that this is great, but within the local reality. You can’t compare with West Ham, who are fifth in the Premier League and have Declan Rice one of the most coveted players in the country at their back.
“Since the draw for the fourth round, I’ve asked our athletes not to think or talk about West Ham. In front of me they avoid it, but I’m sure that when I’m away, they don’t do anything else”, he says.
He is not wrong. In an interview this week, defender Keith Lowe said defenders had commented on wanting to “go a little harder” on Michail Antonio, the rival’s most dangerous striker, “for him to remember what it’s like to play away from the elite divisions”. .
Kidderminster can repeat the feat of 1994, when they reached the fifth stage of the FA Cup. They were eliminated by West Ham itself 1-0. People close to the club say that since then no non-professional team has achieved this feat. Crawley Town obtained this in 2011, but it was a professional club that played in an amateur league.
“We have to believe that we will be on our best day and that the opponent is not concentrated. You never know in football. It can happen”, concludes Penn.
Source: Folha
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