Coventry City-Luton Town — Sportellate.it

The match that decided the last team of the next Premier League.

“Erasmus” is the Monday column in which we tell you about a sparkling game from the international football weekend. If you missed previous episodes, you can find them here.

There are those days at the end of the school year that already feel like holidays without being one yet. They are those moments in which you pull the strings and, either for the sun and the taste of ice cream or for the pool parties of your rich companion, you wander, looking at reality and imagining it more pleasant than it is. A beautiful dream, but one that hides a grimace around the corner when you think of the insects that will buzz around the pool or the faulty fountain from which you can’t swallow sips of blue gold. Coventry City-Luton Town isn’t that it? The Championship Play-off final, after all, isn’t this?

Both teams carry some really cool nicknames, making it impossible to really pick a favourite. On the one hand the Coventri, the Sky Blues oh SingersThat to a Robins they owe a revolutionary period in their history and to another Robins, sitting on the bench since 2017 and signatory of a contract renewal until 2027, they owe a ride that would bring them back in the Premier after 22 years. On the other side Luton Town, the Hatters, followed by an orange river that recalls the fans of Max Verstappen around the Formula 1 circuits. Luton which, 15 years ago, suffered a 30-point penalty for economic defaults and until 2014 saw all too often the amateur football. On the one hand a logo with an elephant supporting a castle and, on the sides, Leofric’s Black Eagle representing the medieval families of the city and a golden Phoenix to symbolize the rebirth after the Bombing by the Luftwaffe of 1940. On the other, a straw hat above a quadripartite shield with a bee in the center (the industriousness of the inhabitants) and in the quadrants a sheaf of wheat (agriculture and raw material for hats), a beehive (which symbolizes the industriousness of the hatters), a rose (a reference to Sir John Napier, Baron of Luton) and a thistle (symbol of Scotland, Napier’s homeland).

The game has a considerable dose of romanticism down (according to the protagonists themselves) already only if you think that both teams were in the fourth division five years ago. Coventry, in the Premier League, would find Aston Villa and Wolverhampton, rivals in the seventies and never seen again in the new millennium; Luton would leave great rivals Watford alone in the Championship with the added insult of seeing promotion arrive with Rob Edwards on the bench, the manager Watford had kicked out at the start of the season after a difficult start. Both teams line up with a three-man defence: Coventry 3-4-3, and Luton 3-5-2. In the background is Wembley with 85,700 fans creating a color contrast more befitting a WYD than a football match. Luton line up on the midfield circle embraced, as if to prepare for a minute’s silence. None of this. A light blue balloon flies over their heads. We leave.

Coventry set up with a scholastic 3+2, in which the two Luton strikers lay down in the half spaces and the two midfielders follow the two central midfielders with reference to man. Not even 5 minutes and Osho Luton takes the lead with those deflections from a corner that go into the net by pure inertia, but by one foot the defender is beyond the last defender of the Singers. Time to check at the VAR and the game stops again. Osho himself waves to get the bench’s attention. Capitan Tom Lockyer is slumped to the ground. No one hit it immediately before. Wembley is silent. Rob Edwards gathers his players in midfield, with an Olympian, almost eerie calm. 3 stretchers come in, as if one wasn’t enough. Everyone is breathing again, even if the one who was named Player of the Year by his fans and who scored one of the decisive goals in the semi-final against Sunderland is forced to leave the field. In his place comes Reece Burke, the bouncer chest of a London nightclub, placed as right arm while Osho slips into the middle of the defensive trio.

300 seconds. That was enough to transform Coventry-Luton into a final of throwing, tearing and objectively bad things done with the ball at your feet. Luton seems to be more comfortable with left-handed throwing buggy by Alfie Doughty and the air banks by Elijah Anuoluwapo Oluwaferanmi Oluwatomi Oluwalana Ayomikulehin Adebayo, forward who grew up in the legend of Henry and Ibrahimovic but who at the time of Swindon Town spent two years trying to become a central defender because he was big. The fact is that in the middle of the first half our Elijah transforms into a Duván Zapata cosplay, collects Doughty’s throw on the center-left, shoulders with McNally and drives him crazy, giving him a sombrero. recovering with his right foot and circling him, he definitively cuts him out on the edge of the area with a Ronaldo chop and supports a nice cutback per Jordan Clark. He enters the area and unloads a left at the near post: 0-1.

Marvelous Nakamba, who has a very cool name and has met Prince Harry several times to promote the foundation with which he tries to help the Zimbabwean people, he has a rather thankless task: to prevent the ball from reaching Victor Gyökeres, Coventry center forward with 21 goals in the regular season. The former Aston Villa player does it incredibly well: Gyokeres never receives in the penalty area and, consequently, the Sky Blues they really never seem able to hurt. Adebayo wasted a couple of delicious opportunities, almost in solidarity with the opponent’s centre-forward.

Wembley turns, in games like these, into a field too big for just 22 human beings. The doors become gigantic; legs and arms shorten; the spaces expand and the balls become heavier. At the first ball that Coventry touches in the area, Gustavo Hamer – hero of the semi-final with Middlesbrough – coordinates very badly and fails to convert from a cross peeled by Horvath. The first half ends with some not exactly elegant play by Carlton Morris and some player sorties buggy su FIFA at Brooke Norton-Cuffy, which obviously ended in nothing. At half-time news arrives that Lockyer is well and conscious, much to everyone’s relief.

“Let’s all sing together / Play up, Sky Blues / While we sing together / We will never lose / Tottenham or Chelsea, United or anyone / They shan’t defeat us / We’ll fight till the game is won! / City! City! City!“. I tifosi Singers they keep faith with their nature. They dominate the whistle with which Michael Oliver kicks off the second half. Luton are afraid of winning, Coventry are afraid of losing. Luton have the athleticism of a Premier but the ingenuity of shaking legs, Coventry have the drive to attack in the midfield of the 40,000 who arrived from the West Midlands but don’t seem like a team made to be able to score. Adebayo continues to win aerial duels and Horvath begins to sow panic among Luton fans with some outbursts between the wicked and the disrespectful. In the middle of the second half, under the Coventry curve, the left winger supports the attack on the depth of the centre-forward who, returning towards the center with right-footed action, serves the towing of the midfielder. No, it’s not the replay of Luton’s lead. is the1-1 del Coventryagain signed by Gus Hamer. Balance restored, as in seasonal direct matches, but the impetus is given in the opposite direction, as if Wembley were leaning to one side and scoring in a goal is natural while on the other side it is the world itself that prevents you.

Hamer is injured, he comes out in tears not of pain but of displeasure. Left-handed and all the rest of Doughty also out, and it would count for little were it not for another fantastic name in the Luton squad, Wilfred Oluwafemi Onyedinma. Up until the 90th minute, very little resembling football happened, but by now the ball was bouncing from one bundle of nerves to another. Even extra time turns into a trickle (to quote Allegri) where the ball seems to cause concrete and physical suffering. The only jolt comes when Luton find the new advantage but it is clear from the start, for the second time in the match, that the joy will be a strangled scream in the throat, this time due to the arm Joe Taylor’s right. It is inevitable to arrive at the series from the disk, an equally cruel way to mercilessly put an end to an agony that no one would like to end that not even theOne man wolf wash can contemplate. The 10 points difference in favor of Luton built in the regular season do not count. It’s all here and now.

It pulls under the fans of Luton. An orange tide, tulips are expected and instead on the heart there are rose and thistle. All the top 11 score, some with more style, some with decidedly less. The twelfth of the lottery appears on the spot, who took over for Coventry at the start of extra time. Sheikh Mohamed Fankaty Dabo he probably pays the price of having a name too good not to be in Luton, shooting his right foot directly into the Wembley grandstand. Tears, Captain Lockyer’s shirts to the sky: Luton Town are in the Premier League.