West Ham United’s club anthem is about the happiness that always hides. “Forever blowing bubbles” is the name of the melancholic song that sounds before every home game, it’s about soap bubbles that then really rise up into the sky and of course in the end burst like the hopes and dreams of the fans. The anthem is representative of the mostly hapless traditional company from London’s East End. But this Wednesday, after winning the Conference League final, luck suddenly came. At the award ceremony, those involved could hardly wait for the trophy to be handed over. When the players then lifted the pot, nobody wanted to let go of it. The celebrations in front of their own supporters lasted around an hour and a half, just as long as the match.
The tabloid Sun titled, in a pun on bubbles and bubbly (champagne): “Lovely bubbly”, delightfully effervescent joy! And what this looked like was revealed to coach David Moyes. The 60-year-old veteran mingled with the players, cheered and danced – and then shared the happiness with his father by hanging the medal around his neck on the pitch. This had inspired him as an upscale amateur coach to his career in professional football. The win marks Moyes’ first real title, in his 1,097th game on the touchline. As for many players and the club even after a long wait.
For the first time in 58 years, West Ham won an international title again on Wednesday night in Prague with a, well, lucky 2-1 win against Fiorentina. Back then, the great Bobby Moore, England’s only World Cup captain, led the club to the European Cup Winners’ Cup. West Ham defeated TSV 1860 Munich 2-0 at London’s Wembley Stadium, Alan Sealey scoring both goals in the space of two minutes against 1860 goalkeeper Petar Radenković. The fact that golden confetti is now raining down over the eternally passionate West Ham club is probably also a sign to all outsiders not to give up.
West Ham’s winning goal came after a through ball and fell into the path of the darting Jarrod Bowen – in the 90th minute of the game. Due to his almost identical surname to British music legend David Bowie, who once wrote the beautiful refrain “We can be heroes, just for one day” in his love song “Heroes”, Bowen has been consistently referred to as “Hero” in the island’s media and by fans. designated. And in this case, he probably won’t be the hero for just one day. After scoring, coach Moyes sprinted onto the pitch and cheered in front of his own supporters as if the game had already been over. This was “the greatest success” of his career, Moyes said quite bluntly. Moments like this don’t come “often” in life. If this had been prophesied to him when he first started at West Ham, he would have declared the person ‘crazy’.
Coach Moyes relies on a pragmatic strategy
First, Moyes saved the struggling club from relegation as caretaker manager for the sacked Slaven Bilić in the 2017/18 season. In his second term, two years later, he passed the same test and was hired permanently at West Ham. With a powerful and structured football that always looks like work and sweat, Moyes led the Londoners to their best league finishes of the century, finishing sixth and seventh. And in exactly the same style, his defense-focused team now played the final against Fiorentina. Because of his pragmatic strategy and his unforgettable jubilee run, the Sun as “Moyrinho”, in reference to the old international José Mourinho.
However, his remarkable results with West Ham are reminiscent of his time at Everton. There, the unpretentious Moyes led a similarly troubled club for eleven straight years. His Scottish compatriot Alex Ferguson then chose him to succeed him at Manchester United – where luck was not exactly on his side. After less than a year, he was fired. And that almost happened to him at West Ham this season. The club temporarily slipped into the relegation zone and their position was under pressure after spending around €200m on new players in the summer of 2022. The focus shifted early on to the ultimately undefeated European Cup season, in which West Ham won more games (twelve) than in the Premier League (eleven).
As the winners of the Conference League, the club will be represented internationally again next year, in the Europa League. Like the 1965 winning team, the heirs to the heavily courted captain Declan Rice will hold a bus parade in London on Thursday. It is like a journey through time, from the streets of the old home ground Boleyn Ground to the 2016 Olympic Stadium in Stratford. With certainty, many beautiful soap bubbles will rise again – but with a bit of imagination, this time they won’t fade, but rather rise into the sky to Bobby Moore.
