Key events
David Moyes’ pre-match thoughts
[On the selection] It was a difficult decision. Thilo Kehrer and Aaron Cresswell have played really well, so it was a tough call. But I felt [Vladimir Coufal and Emerson Palmieri] will go forward, they’re good in attack, and they can supply crosses and balls into the box.
We’re fresh coming into the game. The players are in good spirits, we’ve been ready for the game for a few days now. Hopefully we can show it. We’re really excited to be here. It’s a great achievement for the players. But now we want to win it. There’s huge West Ham support here and we hope we can do them proud.
We’ve scored a lot of goals in Europe this season, we’ve been attacking, and I hope we can do that. We’re up against a good opponent – they’re a decent possession side and we’ll have to deal with that at times. But overall I hope we can go about the job like we did in the earlier games.
“My 30th birthday today and all I’ve been able to think about is tonight’s game,” says Jon Jenner. “Waiting in an East London pub to watch the game feeling incredibly nervous, and horribly hopeful alongside it. Think it will be a ridiculously tight game – let’s hope this ends up being the present of all presents, rather than the misery of 2006!”
“Lest West Ham fans think that Fiorentina’s right back Dodo is a reference to an extinct, flightless, probably somewhat hapless bird,” begins Peter Oh, “let me provide a quick pronunciation guide. The nickname is actually Dodô, pronounced something like doh-DOE.”
This will almost certainly be Declan Rice’s last game for West Ham, at least in his first spell at the club. There’s a script with his name on it.
“Calling this a ‘major’ European final would imply there is a ‘minor’ final out there somewhere,” says Adam Hazell. “What other competition am I missing?”
I’ll give you a clue: the Intertoto Cup, which West Ham (and Juventus and Montpellier) won in 1999.
Don’t expect tonight’s game to be a triumph of the Corinthian spirit. This is Football 2023, after all.
On the plus side, there’s surely no chance the game will be as cynical as last week’s Europa League final.
“Evening Rob,” says Roger Kirkby. “This competition has such a long name, they should change it to the Fans’ Cup, as the interest in it definitely stems from long suffering teams all over Europe finally having their own cup to go for. And there’s a cherry on the cake, the winner qualifies for for the Europa League next season. So win tonight and West Ham are about 40 games from winning the Champions League in two years time.”
West Ham last won a major trophy in 1980, which was also the year David Moyes was first involved in senior football. In the last 43 years he’s played for Celtic and managed Everton and Manchester United among others. This is the game of his life.
Only the champions Napoli had more possession than Fiorentina in Serie A this season, so we know how this game is likely to pan out. West Ham, so menacing on the counter-attack, won’t mind that at all.
The first email of the night!
“Hey there Rob,” writes Rob Lewis. “The decision not to fly to Prague cost me sleepless nights, but here I am, 1000 km away in Istanbul waiting for the kick-off. I was at Wembley in 1980 for that last trophy win, and now I hope and pray that tonight we can recreate some of that 1965 style and win after all those years of pain.”
Team news: Coufal and Emerson start
David Moyes has picked Vladimir Coufal and Emerson Palmieri at full-back ahead of Thilo Kehrer and Aaron Cresswell, the only changes from the second leg of the semi-final in Alkmaar. That means the goalscorer Pablo Fornals is again on the bench.
Fiorentina manager Vincenzo Italiano prefers Luka Jovic up front to Arthur Cabral, which is a bit of a surprise. That’s one of four changes from their second-leg win in Basel. Luca Ranieri, Rolando Mandragora and Christian Kouame also start in place of Igor, Gaetano Castrovilli (injured) and Josip Brekalo.
Fiorentina (4-3-3) Terracciano; Dodo, Milenkovic, Ranieri, Biraghi; Bonaventura, Amrabat, Mandragora; Kouame, Jovic, Gonzalez.
Substitutes: Cerofolini, Saponara, Cabral, Ikone, Terzic, Venuti, Martinez Quarta, Duncan, Bianco, Barak, Brekalo, Igor.
West Ham (4-2-3-1) Areola; Coufal, Zouma, Aguerd, Emerson; Soucek, Rice; Bowen, Paqueta, Benrahma; Antonio.
Substitutes: Fabianski, Johnson, Cresswell, Fornals, Lanzini, Downes, Cornet, Ings, Ogbonna, Kehrer, Potts, Mubama
Referee Carlos del Cerro Grande (Spain).
Emerson over Cresswell at left-back a big call from Moyes. Not as solid defensively. But Emerson has big match experience – started the Euro 2020 final and the 2019 Europa League final.
— Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) June 7, 2023
Jason Rodrigues
West Ham are in their first major European final for 47 years. In 1976, they reached the final of the Cup Winners’ Cup but lost 4-2 to Anderlecht.
In his match report from the Heysel stadium, Brussels, the Guardian’s David Lacey said: “the turning point came two minutes before half-time when a bad mistake by Lampard [Sr] gave Anderlecht a simple equaliser”.
The Belgium side scored a second after the break, and although West Ham equalised, Anderlecht found the net two more times to lift the trophy.
Lacey gave credit to West Ham for making it a compelling final, writing that “they never abandoned their attacking traditions.” He picked out Trevor Brooking, playing wide left, as an example of this.
There have been reports of a few arrests in Prague, though BT Sport say the atmosphere is generally good
Here’s today’s Football Daily, which concentrates on the main event
In the simplest terms, tonight’s match is 8th in Serie A v 14th in the Premier League. But you probably want to know a bit more about Fiorentina. Educate yourself with the help of Nicky Bandini.
The final is being played at the Fortuna Arena, where Vladimir Coufal and Tomas Soucek used to play their football for Slavia Prague. It has a capacity of less than 20,000, and it feels like Uefa have been surprised by the success of their own competition. Last year’s final between Roma and Feyenoord was played at the Arena Kombëtare in Tirana, Albania, with a crowd of 19,597.
With the way the competition is growing – next year’s final is in Athens, capacity 32,500 – tonight’s match might set a long-standing record for the lowest attendance in a 21st-century European final (Covid notwithstanding).
Preamble
Hello and welcome to live coverage of the Europa Conference League final between Fiorentina and West Ham in Prague. Yet another English team in a European final, eh? Well, yes, but this isn’t like the others. It’s the 29th appearance by an English team in a final since the return to European competition in 1990 – but it’s only the third by a team outside what we now call the Big Six: Middlesbrough 2006, Fulham 2010, West Ham 2023.
As such, the mood is different: all connected with West Ham – and Fiorentina – know this is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for their club. West Ham haven’t won a major trophy since they beat Arsenal in the FA Cup final of 1980, and they haven’t won a European competition since the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965. Hell, they’ve won the World Cup most recently than that.
Fiorentina last trophy was the 2001 Coppa Italia, though they lost this year’s final to Internazionale. Their only European triumph was also in the Cup Winners’ Cup, four years before West Ham, and their last final was the Uefa Cup of 1989-90. Fiorentina lost that 3-1 on aggregate to Juventus, a defeat made infinitely more painful by Roberto Baggio’s imminent move to Turin.
Many of us were guilty of sneering at the Conference League when it was founded in 2021. But it already feels like an essential part of the calendar – more innocent than the Champions League, less predictable than the Champions and Europa Leagues. Fiorentina and West Ham are among football’s have-nots, but the haves will probably never experience the type of excitement that both sets of fans and players are enjoying right now. For one of them, the most glorious of glories awaits.
Kick off 8pm BST, 9pm in Prague and Florence.
