VAR FINALLY SHINES
ACF Fiorentina 1 West Ham United 2
My mate John and I booked our British Airways return flights to Prague to attend this final at the beginning of August 2022, a week or so before West Ham took part in their qualifying fixtures in the Europa Conference League. I found an excellent and competitively priced hotel and booked that, too.
Around ten months later and West Ham are preparing to take on the Italian club Fiorentina, a club they previously faced in the 1975-76 season in the short-lived two-legged Anglo-Italian Cup Winners Cup Final. On that occasion, West Ham lost both legs of the competition fixture 1-0, whilst nevertheless reaching the actual European Cup Winners Cup final. They also lost that game 4-2 on that disappointing occasion to Anderlecht. This season’s competition set them up against Anderlecht again, at the group stage, but this time they won the fixtures 1-0, home and away. This sleight of results hand suggests a victory in the final. We shall see.
Paquetá rolls the pass through to Bowen like a perfectly weighted putt on the last green at the Open. With the element of control taken out of the equation, Bowen takes a touch before lifting the ball over Terraciano who, though he flicks a hand at it, cannot prevent its perfect trajectory from taking it firmly into the back of the net. A look at the watch confirms that this is a goal scored in the 90th minute. It isn’t difficult to sense the collective head drop from the Fiorentina players, whose heads must have all been on the journey into extra time mode.
Thanks to Twitter we are able to share this experience intimately with the club and players in a way that would have been impossible in 1965. Memories of the experience down to what we said, how we looked and what Prague was like will be recoverable in all its East End glory forever. How perfect is that?
Scamacca, though, the forgotten man, L’uomo dimenticato… will be amongst the many disappointed Italians tonight…
13 Alphonse Areola, 33 Emerson, 4 Kurt Zouma, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 27 Nayef Aguerd, 41 Declan Rice (captain), 11 Lucas Paquetá, 28 Tomas Souček, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 20 Jarrod Bowen, 9 Michail Antonio
Substitutes: 23 Thilo Kehrer, 8 Pablo Fornals, 21 Angelo Ogbonna
Goalscorers: Saïd Benrahma, Jarrod Bowen
