After the team ended their game with Bolton Wanderers, they stayed another day in England before flying to Spain.
On August 25th at Villarreal’s home stadium, El Madrigal, the Forest team would challenge their opponents in the Champions League qualification game. This game was crucial. Even if Forest defeated Villarreal by 2:0 at home, there was no guarantee that nothing else would go awry.
Twain could imagine that this game would be difficult, so he reminded his players more than once to treat it as such and not think that they could rest on their laurels with a score of 2:0.
Twain showed caution in the tactical and lineup arrangements with the strongest squad and defensive counterattacking.
Anelka was still in the starting lineup. His speed was Twain’s most reliant weapon in the game.
Anelka was in the middle, Franck Ribéry was on the left flank and Ashley Young was on the right flank. This was the trident formation in the Forest team’s counterattack. Twain had only one request for them: to send the football to the opponents’ penalty area as quickly as possible.
Riquelme played a lot better than he had in the first round and Pellegrini did not make an indecisive error. The Villarreal team had an excellent performance overall and scored two goals in the game.
Despite that, the Forest team still held their destiny firmly in their hands during the second half.
After a beautiful breakthrough by Anelka, his shot was blocked by the Villarreal goalkeeper who threw out the ball. Arteta quickly followed up with a rebound shot and the ball went into the net.
That goal occurred four minutes before the end of the game. The Spaniards had already looked forward to overtime. They did not expect their fellow Spaniard, Arteta, to send his teammates into the UEFA Champions League tournament proper.
With an away goal, the score of 3:2 meant that if Villarreal wanted to drag the game into overtime, they had to score two goals in the remaining four minutes!
However, that was an impossible task to complete for the Yellow Submarine players, who had just suffered a heavy blow to their morale.
The fourth official raised the signboard to indicate the injury stoppage time of three minutes. From a minute and a half, the Forest team’s substitutes gathered on the sidelines to wait for the referee to blow the whistle and for them to rush onto the field to celebrate. Now every Nottingham Forest player found those three minutes of injury stoppage time to be too long. Every second seemed to crawl. Some people were even afraid that something else would happen at the last moment. Anything could happen.
Finally…
“The game is over! Nottingham Forest is back in the European Cup after twenty-four years!”
Of course, it was no longer called the “European Cup.” It was now called the “Champions League.”
The ecstatic members of the Forest team did not spend too much time on the field. After all, it was not nice to celebrate so publicly on another team’s turf. Their celebrations were moved to the locker room.
Evan Doughty and Allan Adams were also there to watch. After the game, they both came to the locker room to congratulate the team for their success.
Naturally, the most important person in the locker room was the manager. Twain waved his hands to quiet the crowd and then announced loudly, “You guys did a terrific job. Let’s go to the Champions League and do our best!”
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The team returned to England with glory. At the Heathrow Airport in London, the hardcore Forest fans greeted them with songs and a number of media personnel.
Before the Forest team’s expedition to Spain, a piece of good news came from Liverpool.
As the defending champion of the Champions League and being decided on by the Union of European Football Associations to start from the first round of the qualifier, the “Red Army,” Liverpool, had prevailed in all the rounds to finally defeat the Bulgarian PFC CSKA Sofia in the third round with a total score of 3:2. They advanced into the UEFA Champions League tournament.
In that case, with the Forest team’s elimination of Villarreal, a new record was created. There were as many as five English teams in the Champions League this season.
This was a special circumstance caused by special reasons. It was regarded as a mockery of the UEFA Champions League that the champion of the UEFA Champions League was not able to participate in this new season’s championship due to its Premier League ranking. It would be the first time in its fifty year history that a defending champion was unable to play in the next season’s Champions League. This was because formerly, only the champions from each league could participate in the European Cup, while the previous European Cup champion could automatically enter the tournament. This was the reason why during Brian Clough’s time, Nottingham Forest had been able to participate in the European Cup even though they had not won the Premier League title. They were the defending champion. They were there by virtue of their last championship title, which allowed them to automatically participate.
After the European Cup was changed and became the Champions League, the number of teams that could participate in the Champions League increased and the automatic participation of the defending champion was canceled.
Liverpool’s situation was special. At that time UEFA had discussed it for a long while, and it had even involved the possible sacrifice of Nottingham Forest in exchange for the Reds’ eligibility for the Champions League. If this resolution was passed, then it would be unfortunate for the Forest team. Luckily, that seemingly absurd decision was rejected. The UEFA gave special permission to Liverpool to take part in the Champions League for the new season. However, it would have to start from the first round of the qualifying games. Furthermore, this was an isolated case and would not happen again.
But who would care about what would happen later?
The people of Liverpool benefited, and so did the English. From the moment the news was announced, the English people looked forward to the arrival of the day: five English teams collectively in the highest level of the European club league: the UEFA Champions League.
Now that the day had finally come, it was seen as a major victory for English football. It was also natural for the returning Forest team to receive that kind of attention from the media.
“It would be better if they could bring some fresh flowers.” Twain looked at the scene and spoke with indifference. What did the victory of English football have to do with him? He only cared about his team.
“No matter what you think, you still have to go for an interview,” Kerslake said while they waited to disembark from the plane.
“Once again, I think that Anelka’s brothers are too smart. I should set myself a one-hundred-thousand-pound interview price so that I don’t have to deal with this.”
“You might as well set a hundred thousand pounds per word,” George Wood unexpectedly said as he walked past Twain. All of a sudden, the laughter of the other players could be heard around him.
“Hey!” Twain made as if he was going to grab Wood’s sleeves and the laughter became louder.
Then, amidst the laughter, Wood walked past Twain and said, “My mother would like to invite you to dinner this evening.”
Twain was stunned.