Incredibly, it is a full year since West Ham United enjoyed the greatest moment in the Club’s modern history.
On an unforgettable night in Prague, the Hammers defeated Fiorentina 2-1 to win the UEFA Europa Conference League, ending the Club’s 43-year wait to lift a major trophy and completing a sensational, unbeaten campaign that saw us win 14 of the 15 European ties, scoring 35 goals and conceding just nine.
Every member of the Claret and Blue Army remembers exactly where they were at 9.53pm British Summer Time on Wednesday 7 June 2023, when Jarrod Bowen collected Lucas Paquetá’s pass and raced clear of the Fiorentina defence.
Around 10,000 supporters were inside the Fortuna Arena, desperate to repeat their celebrations of half-an-hour earlier, when Saïd Benrahma had fired their team in front from the penalty spot. Tens of thousands more filled the fan zone in the city’s Letná Park – where earlier Chesney Hawkes and Luděk Mikloško had appeared to loud cheers – and millions watched on television in pubs, bars and living rooms all over the world.
Wherever they were, West Ham fans held their breath as Bowen reached the penalty area and shot left-footed. The ball appeared to take an age as it bounced past the goalkeeper and slowly into the Italians’ net. As their matchwinner slid on his knees in front of them, wherever they were, those same fans roared, shouted and cried.
Eight minutes later, the full-time whistle finally blew and jubilant pandemonium ensued as manager David Moyes, his players and staff raced onto and around the pitch, arms raised, huge smiles on their faces. In the stands, supporters, who had never known an emotion like it, embraced, many with tears of joy streaming down their faces.
Returning to that moment, 365 days on, will send hairs on the backs of those same supporters’ necks standing up on end.
“To give them a European trophy is incredible,” Bowen told West Ham TV, seconds after the final had ended. “I make that run ten times a game and I might only get the ball once but, when I got it I had to put it away. I had a lot of time and I was a bit nervous running through, so to see it go in, I was like…”
Bowen’s words trailed away as he relived his instantly historic moment in his head, before he summed up his feelings perfectly in one sentence: “You always say you want to score the winning goal in the last minute, but to do it for this Club, for these fans, it’s the best moment of my life!”
Bowen, of course, was just one of 20 players who shared that achievement.
For two, Tomáš Souček and Vladimír Coufal, winning in the capital city of the country they call home, Czech Republic, was particularly poignant.
“We have done it!” smiled Coufal, his young daughter perched on his shoulders on the Fortuna Arena pitch. “We are making West Ham history. This is beautiful. Everyone in the Club definitely deserves it and it happened in Prague, which is even more emotional for me.”
It was not just the players who relished that night, of course. For sporting director, former captain, midfielder and lifelong fan Mark Noble, it marked the culmination of decades of commitment, and a refusal to admit West Ham would never again lift a major trophy.
“This is the pinnacle of years and years of hard work to get to this position,” Noble observed. “There has been a lot of failure, a lot of heartache, a lot of tears, but that’s why we love the Club and why West Ham is West Ham, because you never know what’s around the corner.”
Those sentiments were shared by someone who shared many of Noble’s experiences, by someone who Noble himself had mentored and who inherited the captain’s armband from him in the season he ended by lifting the Europa Conference League trophy, Declan Rice.
“We’ve had ups, we’ve had downs, but this is what we do it for, for these fans,” Noble’s fellow Academy of Football graduate told West Ham TV. “Look how special it is, and what a special group of people they all are. It’s incredible. I’m so happy. This Club means so much to me.”
For manager Moyes, Wednesday 7 June 2023 marked the night all his many decades of tireless work and commitment to the Beautiful Game brought a beautiful reward.
“This will be as big as it gets, to be a European winner with West Ham!” he beamed, moments before toasting the biggest achievement of his life with his 88-year-old father, wife and two children.
“If someone had said to me we’d have been in Europe, made a semi-final then a final and winning it, they’d have said ‘you’re dreaming’.”
The celebrations continued on the pitch, with family and friends joining in, before the party moved to the dressing room, where the players danced and signed each other’s shirts and manager Moyes made good on his promise to jig to Scottish band The Proclaimers.
The following day, an estimated 70,000 fans lined the streets of east London to welcome their heroes home on an open-top bus tour from Upton Park, through Plaistow to Stratford, in scenes not witnessed in Newham in over four decades.
As the Club’s long-serving, long-suffering Claret and Blue Army had sung all season long, during trips to Denmark, Romania, Denmark (again), Belgium, Cyprus, Belgium (again), the Netherlands and finally, unforgettably, the Czech Republic, West Ham were massive, and now we were Champions of Europe, too.
