Demba Ba's Dunkerque spirit

Under sporting director Demba Ba, the minnows have been a sensation this season, pursuing promotion to Ligue 1 and facing PSG in a Coupe de France semi. FFT went along to see it - along with fans from, er, Grimsby?!

- Ed McCambridge

On the beaches of Dunkirk in northern France, more than 330,000 Allied troops were evacuated as part of a Second World War operation codenamed ‘Dynamo’.

Those fraught scenes in late May and early June 1940 have inspired countless books and films over the decades since.

Operation Dynamo remains the port town’s primary association - the word ‘Dunkirk’ evoking images of desperate soldiers awaiting salvation on windswept shores, and of a makeshift flotilla of fishing boats, yachts and other civilian craft joining forces to help rescue them from the encircling Nazi war machine.

Now, a second-tier football club is hoping to make new memories. Almost exactly 85 years after that turmoil, FFT has traversed the English Channel in the opposite direction to northern France.

This David versus Goliath showdown is in the semi-finals of the Coupe de France: minnows USL Dunkerque against the mighty Paris Saint-Germain. Interest in this match is so high that Les Maritimes (the Seasiders) have chosen to host it at Lille's 50,000-capacity Stade Pierre-Mauroy, an hour south-east, rather than their own bijou 4,900-seater venue.

Dunkerque are currently a team in the ascendancy. Founded in 1909, they've bounced between the fifth and second tiers throughout their 116-year history, last reaching the Coupe de France semis in 1929. They've neither won a major trophy, nor played in Ligue 1.

Yet that might be about to change under ambitious owner Jasper Yildirim, a Turkish businessman who purchased the newly promoted Ligue 2 side in the summer of 2023. The club on the brink of bankruptcy and in danger of being relegated straight back to the third tier by way of punishment from the French Football Federation, Yildirim’s first task was to balance the books.