They came over land and sea, just like they always hoped. Some direct, into one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Others via Barcelona, Madrid or Malaga, which aren’t too bad either.
At Luton airport, one supporter arrived four-and-a-half hours early for his flight because he couldn’t sleep. Others asked aircraft marshals to take their photos in front of the plane, for posterity. And why not: they had waited 10,780 days for this.
In Seville on Wednesday afternoon, red shirts milled around the Parque de Maria Luisa in a bid to clear fuzzy heads. Many others had a different strategy, collecting around bar stools in the sun. At one, club co-owner Sokratis Kominakis picked up an 800 Euro bill and posed for selfies.
Flags hung on metal railings, a roll call of the towns of home: Stapleford, Newark, Hucknall and more. Supporters were impeccably behaved throughout – so much that it merited a report in Spanish media.
Several of those flags were adorned with the four words that became the mantra in the glory years and has been adopted again since Forest began the re-rise under Steve Cooper: Nottingham Forest are magic. The replica shirts on display were mostly either very recent or 90s retro. Why would you want to commemorate the seasons in between?
If Tuesday was party night for those who arrived early, Wednesday was noticeably lower-key. I heard the same message on repeat, on the plane, the train and in the city centre: we want to be able to soak it all in. That applies too to the hundreds who came for the ride but had no match ticket.
Giddiness is a powerful drug and just being in the same place as Forest’s European game in almost 30 years was enough to feed off the fumes. Some supporters are used to watching their club play abroad; this fanbase is not one.
When did it sink in for you? Was it the day of the draw, when you had tabs open on your computer for three different budget airlines? Was it when you turned up your television loud for the Uefa anthem on Wednesday evening?
Was it the sight of the away end, high up in the Estadio La Cartuja, singing Mull of Kintyre? Or was it when Ryan Yates, the club captain who joined at eight, ran onto the pitch as a substitute? Is it odd to be so chuffed for a professional footballer?
On a personal level it was none of those, instead a creeping realisation across two-and-a-half days in Seville through seeing semi-familiar faces in an entirely alien location, like spotting your teacher out of school. I have done dozens of European trips, in sun and snow, but never like this.
The same internal question played on repeat: where do I know your face from? The answer, usually, is the Trent Nav, the William Gunn, the Strat or just some away day of yore.
It is fitting that Forest’s first game back was in Spain. It was here that they played their first ever European tie in 1961 and here where they played three times in 1980: European Super Cup, European Cup final, European Super Cup.
That is the year that goes down most in Forest folklore, when they defended one unthinkable title with another. Only AC Milan and Real Madrid have won the European Cup consecutively since. You could make an argument for it as sport’s greatest ever outlier.
As Jose Mourinho thought to himself when visiting Nottingham for the first time in 1996: “I walked all the way around the city and when I saw the stadium I thought: ‘Are you kidding me, this club won the European Cup? Twice?’”
All that history/baggage (delete as appropriate) makes supporting Forest weird, quite frankly, because it is impossible to process. European football in the 1960s, European titles in the 1970s and 1980s, England’s last surviving club in Europe for a season in the 1990s and then… nothing.
There are three generations of Forest fans: those who tell everyone else about the European glory years, the young ones experiencing it now and the ones who have heard about them from their elders and went through almost 30 years of comparative gruel. At times, those in the last group believed that they might never see anything else.
As such, this was always about emotional recompense, a reward for the loyalty during the bad years. For Salisbury City, for Woking, for Highfield Road and then Loftus Road in 2005 when they fell lower than any other European champion. For Stoke City on the final day in 2020, the most ludicrous collapse out of the play-offs. For those repeated play-off semi-final second leg failures, where the only argument surrounds which one made you feel the most pain.
This isn’t how football works, of course – there is no karmic rebalance, only an inescapable meritocracy increasingly shifted by vast owner wealth. But it is how football supporter psychology works. So many supporters in Seville spoke of this trip, and this European campaign, as glorious redemption for the lost years.
To that, an added layer of strangeness. Last season, supporters sang triumphantly that they were “on the piss with Nuno”. Then came the internal politics of Nuno Espirito Santo and Edu, a messy international break goodbye and the descent into a mania that does tend to persistently cling to Forest.
However you feel about the future, there is an appropriate regret that Nuno was not able to lead this team out in Europe at least once. The present is Ange Postecoglou. At least he won it last year.
Four away games to start a managerial tenure is a hospital pass for anyone, but to do it mid-season and tasked with overhauling a team’s style while also preparing for a draining European campaign makes Forest fascinating for neutrals and partisan supporters alike. Under Nuno, there was a concrete floor for their performance. Now the floor has gone and who knows if the ceiling can ever again go as high as last season.
But Postecoglou will certainly try. Recovering from an early conceded goal in La Cartuja, Forest produced a 20-minute period of attacking football that ranks as high as anything those 3,385 away supporters have seen in years. They roared at Igor Jesus’ equaliser, a goal so well constructed that the manager, post-game, detailed it as the reason that football is beautiful. They thrashed in disbelief when a lead followed shortly after.
In that first half, you could see the ingredients that Postecoglou believes can create a fourth new era in as many years; they don’t hang about with their new beginnings here.
Elliot Anderson was the star, a dribbling, passing, tackling, thinking one-man band of a midfielder who is making a habit of rising up to every new stage.
How to distill this style shift best? In all competitions last season – an annus mirabilis, remember – Forest had more than 30 touches in the opposition penalty area in an away match only once, against a desperate Southampton side.
In Seville, they had 30 touches in Betis’ box in the first 45 minutes alone. If this is the company in which they must compete, signs look good.
Forest did not win the game. For a third successive match they squandered a lead to lose or draw. After the match, Postecoglou admitted that his players were deeply disappointed and accepted that this is a business of results. He will need to win a game soon to complement the shift in attacking strategy.
By the end, those in red were shattered, Neco Williams running not on grass but in treacle after a monstrous performance on the right flank. There were certainly questions about the impact of new signing substitutes who largely failed to exploit opportunities on the counter-attack to kill Betis’ spirit. Forest have not kept a clean sheet since the opening day and so much has changed since.
Disappointment should be overshadowed by pride. At full-time, Postecoglou led his players over to the far corner of La Cartuja, where the away support prepared to wait for an hour to be permitted to leave by local police. The reaction was universal and emphatic. Players stood to soak up the adoration and gratitude.
On Thursday morning, the great sleepy, sore-headed Seville exodus. One train to Malaga was cancelled, causing some panic. Others scampered for direct flights only a few hours after their head had hit the pillow. Being walked back into a city centre by police at midnight is nobody’s idea of fun.
Less chanting or demonstrative cheer on the way home, of course, but you wouldn’t change it for the world. In Santa Justa train station, one dad sat next to his young son in McDonald’s and told him to take out his earphones for a minute.
“You will always remember how lucky you were to be here,” he said, before the boy quickly went back to his viewing. That is the problem with the young: it is so easy to think that the good times will last forever that you underestimate the importance of taking a few moments to get misty-eyed. It is in those seconds that memories are reinforced.
Progress under Postecogolou will not be linear and may not happen at a rate to please Evangelos Marinakis; who knows. After each European fixture, thoughts will turn to picking up league points and avoiding talk of the dreaded R word that most hoped had been left behind.
Perhaps then, the best way to view this campaign, and these trips to Spain, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and who knows where else should it go well, is as an island. European qualification is a reward for the unexpected success of players and staff, but the prize for supporters is escapism.
That was the overriding takeaway from Seville. They partied because this was a celebration, but they made sure to remember the night. They revelled in the chance to sing loud and proud into a sticky, sultry Spanish night about how much they love their club and how grateful they are to do what most have spent their whole lives hearing their elders discuss in hushed tones. Europe again, ole ole.
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