How West Ham came to rule Europe

From the tiny Danish city of Viborg to the Prague celebrations, Malik Ouzia tells the inside story of an incredible campaign

- Malik Ouzia

ON WEST HAM’s recent warm-weather trip to Portugal, David Moyes was part of a staff four-ball sampling one of the Algarve’s many golf courses.

Playing alongside sporting director Mark Noble, the pair were two-down with three holes to play before Moyes came alive up the stretch, the match eventually finishing all-square.

Only on that last fact does the contest fall down as a metaphor for West Ham’s season: after delivering the club’s first trophy in 43 years, a campaign littered with bogeys has ended way above par.

It has been quite the journey for Moyes’s side, a 294-day Euro campaign that began in the middle of August, was interrupted by a winter World Cup and weaved its way through a Premier League relegation battle to arrive here.

After the near-miss of Frankfurt in last season’s Europa League semi-final, there was little summer snobbery about the prospect of a campaign in UEFA’s third-tier competition. At Rush Green, there was early resolve among Moyes and his staff to target the tournament, Tottenham the unspoken reference point for an English club in need of a trophy who had failed to take advantage of the glaring opportunity.