It’s the summer prior to my 4th season in charge at Portadown. We swept all the domestic trophies last season and were invincible through the league season. The only way to improve on last season would be to venture further into European competition.
We’re still a semi-pro side, so attracting top footballers isn’t on the cards despite the £4.2M we’ve got sitting in the bank. The biggest expenditure we seem to have these days are the signing-on fees for new players or upgrading current contracts.
We’ve got six summer signings lined up but I’m only REALLY sure about one of them.
- Glenn Ferguson from Linfield, but he’s 34 years old and I’m pretty sure I paid too much in signing-on fee to drag him away from his beloved Linfield.
- Colin Reilly, a defender from Dundee Utd with 13/16/20/16 for marking/positioning/heading/tackling seems like a decent pickup and is the one that I’m happiest about.
- Adrian Moody, a defender from Wrexham that’s not as good as Reilly.
- Steve Torpey, a former Liverpool academy product who’s done nothing with his three seasons at Port Vale and I’m increasingly convinced I want him to do nothing here either.
- Karl Munroe of Macclesfield (former Swan) hasn’t made a senior start in three years and probably wouldn’t here either.
- A young Dutch AM from PSV named Robin van Persie but I’m not sure he’s quite good enough to warrant how much he’d cost (£500k in signing on fee) to bring here.
I withdraw all bids save Reilly’s but before I get on with the summer, I notice that Ferguson’s asking price has steeply declined. I re-bid at a much lower signing-on fee…and then realise that we’ve qualified for Europe and can’t purchase non-Dutch players. Stupid Board.
We sweep the seasonal individual awards as expected. Hose wins PotY and Top Goalscorer (de Weerdt was 2nd and 3rd in those categories) with JCDV wins Young PotY and I snag the MotY awards.
Roma end up as Champions Cup beating last year’s winners, Bayern. Bayern equalise twice before Roma score a third time. Three different scorers for Roma and any casual fan could predict their names: Totti, Bati and Monti.
Atalanta scored a golden goal in the UEFA Cup Final vs Real Madrid to send both major trophies to Italy.
Colin Reilly arrives as June rolls around. He’ll add some depth and though he’s not Dutch, he was signed back in December so the Board allow it.
Bids galore arrive for a bunch of our players: Koopman, van Herik, Vanenburg, de Visscher and Hose. I have no interest in selling as I’d rather keep the players we have vs selling and not being able to purchase any replacements…
The supporters rightly vote for Brutil Hose as their PotY. He really was head and shoulders above everyone else.
The Board (despite being idiots on transfer policy) seem happy enough to splash our hard-earned cash on our infrastructure, so we now have “Good” facilities, as well as a promise to improve them again next year.
Then, in a quid pro quo move by the Board, I’m told they expect…
In season 1, Northern Ireland’s UEFA coeffecient was 1.50. We had four European entrants with Cliftonville crashing out of the First Inter-Toto Round and Glentoran doing the same in the Qualifying Round of the UEFA Cup. Glenavon made it a step further than Glentoran, qualifying for the UEFA Cup but losing in the First Round proper. Linfield also made it through a Qualifying Round — but of the Champions Cup — before crashing out at the Second Qualifying Round.
These results dropped our coefficient for season 2 to 1.33, yet we somehow earned five spots in Europe. Coleraine failed to win in the Inter-Toto First Round, Glenavon and Linfield qualified for the UEFA Cup First Round and then lost while Glentoran won three ties before losing in the UEFA Cup Third Round. We made a ridiculous run into the Champions Cup Phase Two before getting absolutely clobbered by Barcelona/Celtic/AC Milan.
Those escapades bumped our coefficient to 3.00, yet we were back to only four places. We lost out in the Third Round of Champions Cup qualifying before progressing to the Third Round of the UEFA Cup. Linfield didn’t manage to qualify for the actual UEFA Cup, Coleraine did mange to but lost in the First Round and Glentoran were beaten in Round One of the Inter-Toto.
SOMEHOW, these results pushed our coefficient for the current season into double-digits at 10.43. We still only claim four European places, but what a leap from 40th to 31st.
Before you can say “Portugal and Germany will face each other in the European Cup Final in three days’ time” we add another solid defender to the mix. And YES, he’s Dutch….ish. He’s been at Utrecht long enough that he’s earned his Dutch second citizenship. £200k (plus a ludicrous £1M if he ever hits 50 caps) is all it takes to land him. This is shortly after I hear from the media that Challinor of all people is being eyed up for the better part of a million quid!
We line up a summer friendly for the first time in a while because when the recently crowned Premier League champions from across the Irish Sea come knocking to set up a Prem winner vs. Prem winner battle, you don’t turn them down. In my haste to accept, I forget that we’ll be busy that day with some pressing business against some other league champ from a…less prestigious country, shall we say.
With the earlier interest in Challinor, he decided it was time to leave. I didn’t get close the the million mentioned, but I’m happy enough to collect 53.5 times what we paid for him.
Germany are crowned Euro champs, dispatching hosts Portugal 2–1 behind a match-winning first ever German goal for Guiseppe Gemiti.
Following Challinor out the door the following week is Darren Black. He was useful two seasons ago but his role shrank significantly last season. He’s headed back to his home country to ply his trade in the third tier of English football.
The Champions Cup draw pairs us with Kyapaz, a side that has advanced past this round for each of the past two seasons. The Azerbaijani champs have a decent size (20k) stadium and we’ll look forward to our 2,600 mile (as the crow flies) trip there.
And if we manage to get through, our reward will be a trip to sunny and tropical…Dublin. A full 79 mile trip virtually due south from Portadown. That equates to an ever-so-slightly longer trip than heading up to Derry to face Institute in league action. It’ll be nice to finally introduce something to rile up the two halves of Ireland after their storied historical friendship.
Speaking of Institute, I should have mentioned this at the end of the last edition. Limavady Utd absolutely crushed Institute last month in the relegation/promotion playoff — 6–0 on aggregate. That means that last season’s 9th and 10th place finishers (Institute and Ards) have both gone down, while Limavady Utd and Crusaders are up in the Premier League for the upcoming season.
Anyway, it’s time for some football to actually be played. We’ve made the wee commute to Gyanja, Azerbaijan to kick off our Champions Cup journey. We forego the 63 hour drive and settle for an almost 14 hour flight out of Dublin with stops in Istanbul and Nakhchivan.
We’ve got a few fitness issues still, so we rotate a few regulars on to the bench. Odartey and Feeney will probably be regular starters once the fitness levels are up but are resigned to the bench for now. Kyapaz have one contracted player (Tongchai Ludwig, who’s an Azerbaijani international centre back) and a team of youths. I reckon we can handle them.
And we do. I imagine we’ve qualified for the next round already. I can hardly imagine a situation in which Kyapaz hand us our biggest defeat of all time in the reverse fixture. A rough day in the office for the youth keeper Kyapaz sent out.
To sign as a Bosman while at PSV, this guy wanted half a million quid as a signing bonus. Well, he got released, agreed to come trial with us and promptly signed for a £20k signing bonus. I’m not even sure we need him now.
Our Dutch scouts also find this guy without a club and I’m more than willing to give him a home. He’s in for free while it appears we’ll lose one of our young Dutch players as Ipswich meet the release clause (£500k) of Vanenburg. Weird that their names rhyme.
We do a goalie swap for our return leg with Kyapaz but that’s the only change…to the lineup at least. I lower our tackling intensity to normal to save any unnecessary injuries. With a six-goal buffer I’d rather not do anything stupid.
We’re up a goal at the break — meaning Kyapaz now need seven second half goals to send it to extra time — so I take off potentially injured Brewerton, yellow-carded Pinas and tiring Gibson. We tack on a penalty kick tally and then with everything as settled as settled can be, Hose gets injured and will miss a month of action. Not ideal.
Vanenburg seems happy to quadruple his salary and head to a professional club in the English Premier League for some reason. He’s now valued at £975k so I imagine despite not being a starter here, he’s probably got some decent potential.
As we’re now through to face Shamrock Rovers in the second qualifying stage of the Champions Cup, the draw for the third qualifying stage is ready to take place. Looking at the list, I want to avoid far more of them than I’d be happy to face. Ajax, Arsenal, Celtic, Juventus and Man U look like the worst options while I’d be much happier with Lokoren, Rosenborg, Slavia Prague, Sturm Graz or Troyes.
We get a middle-of-road side in Boavista. They’ve got a defensive midfield corps I’d give my right arm for in Fernando Meira, Petit and Costinha. But let’s not worry about them until we’ve navigated the current round.
Shorn of our best player, we head south to Dublin as Martin Kox joins de Weerdt to form our strike partnership. JCVD is back between the sticks.
The calibre of the competition makes a steep climb as — despite being the better side — we have to come back to level the match on two occasions. Kox actually appeared to get our noses in front early, before I’m told his nose was a bit too far in front and offside is called. Shamrock Rovers’ star striker Stephen Grant puts his stamp on the tie with a brace but Pinas replied immediately after his first and Raeside levelled at the death. Our two away goals could prove very important.
A short week later, Shamrock visit the Shamrock to decide who faces Boavista in the next round. Feeney is back in to start and we’re approaching full fitness across the board. A few lads are still lacking match fitness, but they need to get back in to it ASAP.
Our superiority tells in a big way during the second leg. Up three at the break, I relieve both Feeney and Gibson (yellow cards) and then Raeside due to a potential injury. A de Weerdt brace in the second half puts the result beyond doubt and we’ll be the ones to face Boavista and determine which European path we’ll be travelling this year…
Next up: Coleraine at theirs for the Charity Shield and the start of our domestic season. Tune in next time!
