BAČKA TO REALITY
FK TSC Bačka Topola 0 West Ham 1
Although TSC Bačka Topola (Topolski sportski klub) are the second oldest club in the Serbian Super Liga, at their formation in 1912 they were a Hungarian Club, and part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. So not a Serbian club at all. But although they now find themselves in the Serbian Super Liga, for reasons too numerous to mention in the summary of a group stage football match in the Europa League (they have also been Yugoslavian and were even once slightly Croatian), they are owned by a Hungarian, no less a man than Victor Orban, the current Hungarian president, who loved the club so much that he bought it. The village that houses the club’s ground in just 8 miles from the border with Hungary, so Orban can pop over and watch his side whenever he likes, as they are just a short car ride away.
Bačka took a two year sabbatical from the Serbian League in 2003-05, retaining only a youth team, but returned in 2006 to win the Vojvodina League North in the 2006-07 season, the first stage of their climb into the Super Liga, just a decade later.
One of Bačka T’s former players, Nikola Žigić, played in the UK for Birmingham City, and was part of the side that won the League Cup in 2011, his appearance as substitute forming a significant contribution to their 3-1 semi-final League Cup win over Avram Grant’s West Ham side in January 2011. The Hammers had seemed certain to hold their lead from the first leg and head to another Wembley final against Arsenal, but the tall Serbian striker had other ideas, and still covets his League Cup Winners medal, the first and to date only trophy Birmingham have won since 1956.
An informative article on the West Ham United website describes Bačka’s stadium, with its capacity of 4500 supporters, as ‘magnificent.’ It does take cards, which can be deployed in the hunt for burgers, coke and alcohol. You are also allowed to smoke, and the memory of this freedom will stay on my clothes for the next few days as a reminder of the libertarian gesture.
Most of the superlatives that populate this article may seem somewhat out of kilter with the meagre fruit available to the hungry eyes of the 320 travelling West Ham fans in the 90 minutes of ‘football’ they are witness to in the [citation needed] cosy football stadium this evening.
The combined striking force of Mohamed Kudus, Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio has failed to make the journey out to Serbia tonight, due to injuries they all
managed to sustain on last week’s international duty. Their replacements are Saïd Benrahma and Divin Mubama and (eventually) Maxwell Cornet and Danny Ings. Pablo Fornals also starts.
I look around the magnificent stadium towards the other end of the ground facing the pen where the Hammers’ fans have been affectionately placed. It consists of a terrace twenty steps high of standing home fans, chanting enthusiastically as their side do their best to bring their Europa League campign to a respectable finish. Above them is a hundred foot high wall of windowed concrete behind which may be daytime offices or a municipal space available to rent for local businesses for a few thousand Serbian dinar.
A prominent red display chronicles the time passing in the match alongside the score. Neither figures seem to move at all for most of the game. Eventually, however, half-time arrives and I try to remember what I have seen in the first half of this important European game.
Bačka have had the best of events, it has to be said, and only the inspired defensive shift from Nayef Aguerd has kept them at bay. At the other end, not much, and those who have been screaming for Mubama to get some game time, have been disappointed with what they have seen.
There are often games in a season that you can watch and yet somehow not be involved in. This is one of those games. The second half offers Bačka Topola just one opportunity that Fabianski fends away without too much trouble. Cornet comes on with Ings on 67 minutes, and looks lively, somehow operating outside the slo-motion zone that the rest of the players seem stuck in.
Just when those who have made the 2250 mile journey are beginning to wonder why, Cornet gathers the ball out on the right and curls in a sneaky cross that Souček, lurking at the far post, gets on the end of. That’s his third successive late winner in a week for West Ham.
That has to be some kind of record, not to mention the guarantee that Hammers are through to the knock-out stages of the competition.
1 Lucas Fabianski, 2 Ben Johnson, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 15 Dinos Mapropanus, 27 Nayef Aguerd, 7 James Ward-Prowse (captain), 8 Pablo Fornals, 11 Lucas Paquetá, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 28 Tomas Souček, 45 Divin Mubama
Substitutes: 17 Maxwel Cornet, 18 Danny Ings, 33 Emerson, 24 Thilo Kehrer
Goalscorer: Tomas Souček
