Bournemouth play the first competitive European fixture in their history on Thursday, when they meet Real Sociedad in the Europa League in San Sebastián. It is a landmark for a club that began the 2008-09 season on -17 points after failing to exit administration, and which needed a win on the penultimate day of that campaign to avoid falling into non-league. Bournemouth have been in the top flight for all but two seasons since winning promotion in 2015; Europe, as those around the club keep saying, hits differently.
The contrast with 2013 could hardly be sharper. That summer, a couple of months after Bournemouth finished runners-up to Doncaster in the third tier, the club hosted Real Madrid on a balmy day at Dean Court. It was officially Carlo Ancelotti’s first match in charge, and a few hours after checking into the Haven hotel on the Sandbanks peninsula a wave of galácticos took the pitch: Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Kaká, Karim Benzema and the rest. An early, wayward Ronaldo free-kick broke the wrist of an 11-year-old boy, and Madrid ran out 6-0 winners in what amounted to a bucket-list friendly. More than 11,000 crammed in to watch it.
Steve Fletcher, a bona fide Bournemouth legend who scored 121 goals across 728 appearances and is now a club ambassador, had retired a month earlier. ‘I thought: Yeah, that’s typical, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘You play for a club for 20 years, and then you go and get the biggest team in the world to come down. I wanted to say to Eddie Howe: Can I have five minutes on the pitch? For them to play here was utterly ridiculous.’
Fletcher was more than a bystander in the club’s survival, let alone its rise. His winning goal at home against Grimsby on the penultimate day of the 2008-09 season ensured Bournemouth would not fall into non-league. He subsequently worked in the recruitment department, as first-team coach to Howe, Gary O’Neil and Scott Parker, and then as a player liaison officer. ‘I’ve still got kit man and groundsman to go,’ he says, laughing.
On the final day of last season, Bournemouth’s staff and players celebrated qualifying for the Europa League by gathering around a ‘Rayanair’ flag depicting their Brazil forward piloting a plane, with giddy supporters providing the backdrop for the pictures. Those fans have since booked trips to Prague, Oslo and Vigo. Perhaps it was fate that Andoni Iraola, who grew up in the Basque Country, would guide Bournemouth to San Sebastián. ‘It is going to be a momentous occasion, an I-was-there moment,’ Fletcher says. He has exchanged messages this week with Iraola, who sent best wishes, including for a win. Iraola will return to Bournemouth with Liverpool on Sunday, alongside his assistants Tommy Elphick and Shaun Cooper, both of whom also played for the club in the third tier.
The scale of what has been achieved is not lost on Fletcher. ‘I always say to people around Bournemouth: Don’t ever take this for granted,’ he says. ‘It is for every supporter who has ever followed Bournemouth: past, present, for the people who passed away, grandparents, great-grandparents. I think everyone will feel very emotional on Thursday.’
Real Sociedad are playing in Europe for the sixth time in seven seasons, while for Bournemouth — coached by Marco Rose — this is entirely new ground. It was not unplanned, though. At the end of 2023, when Bournemouth were 14th in the Premier League, their American billionaire owner Bill Foley predicted they would play in Europe within five years. Foley’s motto, ‘Always Advance, Never Retreat’, adorns a wall in the boardroom. ‘He created the Golden Knights, the ice hockey team in Las Vegas, and they won the Stanley Cup within six seasons,’ Fletcher says. ‘He has obviously got a crystal ball, he can see things and believes in people … I always think there should be a movie made about this time at AFC Bournemouth.’
Adam Smith, the 35-year-old captain, is in his 15th season at the club, a spell that includes a loan in League One in 2010-11. He remembers training at Canford school, round the corner from the state-of-the-art facility Bournemouth moved into 18 months ago. Asked whether Europe felt plausible when he signed from Tottenham as a teenager, he says: ‘I would never have believed you; I’d just think it’s bonkers.’
Most of the squad watched the August draw in the canteen. Until this season David Brooks was used to midweek European matches meaning a night on the sofa, having watched his Wales teammate Brennan Johnson lift the Europa League and the Conference League in successive seasons with Tottenham and Crystal Palace respectively, and another, Neco Williams, excel in the Europa League for Nottingham Forest. ‘I was delighted for them, but for selfish reasons you want to be involved in teams like that, competing in Europe,’ Brooks says. ‘Everyone’s raring to go and wanting to showcase their talents, and hopefully we can go far. We always cause the big teams in the Premier League problems and I don’t think it should be any different in Europe. The club’s journey has been well documented and to finish it off with a European trophy would be really nice.’
The Madrid game in 2013 coincided with Bournemouth opening a stand named after Ted MacDougall, another much-loved striker, and at the time there was pressure to have the stadium ready for such a landmark fixture. Something similar applied this summer, when Bournemouth had to upgrade their ground to meet Uefa regulations. Their first home game is against Sturm Graz next month; the week after, Milan come to town — Bournemouth’s kit at the start of the 1970s was inspired by Milan’s red-and-black stripes. ‘Just to mutter the words Milan, AC Milan, in the same sentence as AFC Bournemouth, in a competitive fixture, is crazy,’ Fletcher says. ‘I think of Maldini, Baresi, Van Basten, Gullit.’ Viktoria Plzen and Hapoel Be’er Sheva will visit in December and January.
The stand at the other end of the ground has been named after Fletcher since 2010 — a source of pride for a man happy to acknowledge he is not one of the game’s greats. ‘A lot of people might come to Bournemouth and go: Who is Steve Fletcher? Because I’m not one of the great footballers, but I’m very proud of the career I had,’ the 54-year-old says. ‘I’ve had Premier League managers before games, an hour and a half before kick-off, look over and say: That’s your stand, very well done. People like José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola said that and when I walked away I got straight on the phone to my parents and said: You won’t believe what’s just happened.’
Fletcher expects a pervading sense of disbelief among the Bournemouth supporters in San Sebastián and those tuning in from home, and he cites Neil Vacher, the former club secretary and current club historian who grew up as a supporter in the 1960s. ‘Would he have dreamed that we could even be in the top flight, never mind playing in Europe?’ Fletcher says. ‘There will probably be people coming to our European games in their 80s and 90s who will have watched the club from year dot. For us to be mixing it with some of the giants of European football is magical. It’s beyond anybody’s wildest dreams, and we still have to pinch ourselves. But at the same time, we have to enjoy it, embrace it. I hope there’s many more happy times to come. Wouldn’t it be amazing if in the next few years we could play Real Madrid?’
Elsewhere in the Europa League, Ruben Amorim’s Milan — due at Bournemouth the week after Sturm Graz’s visit — were beaten 2-0 by Marco Silva’s Benfica at San Siro, Dodi Lukebakio putting the Portuguese side ahead in the 16th minute and Jakub Kaminski adding a second early in the second half. Bayer Leverkusen, finalists in 2024, began their campaign with a 2-0 win against the Slovenian champions Celje, while Lyon were 2-1 winners at Anderlecht. The Cypriot champions Omonia Nicosia stunned the La Liga side Celta Vigo 1-0, and Jagiellonia Bialystok were denied a point at Olympiacos by Roman Yaremchuk’s late winner. Sparta Prague thrashed Ararat-Armenia 4-1, while Sturm Graz against Rennes and Hapoel Be’er Sheva versus Dinamo Zagreb both ended goalless.