A Welsh flag flies high outside Park Hall Stadium in Oswestry, Shropshire. As The New Saints players file downstairs into the gym from an opposition analysis meeting, they head past a giant whiteboard with another reminder, in block capitals and green marker pen, of the historic step that awaits. “Fiorentina away, 8pm,” reads Thursday’s calendar entry.
The schedule also details their 9am flight to Florence, training at Stadio Artemio Franchi exactly 24 hours before their Conference League opener, rare rest and recovery windows, and the reality of coming back down to earth with a Cymru Premier trip to Briton Ferry, a few miles from the blast furnaces of Port Talbot, on Sunday. Later that day, Fiorentina will host Milan.
As Dan Leach, TNS strength and conditioning coach, logs data from urine samples in polystyrene cups to determine hydration levels, the overhead screeching of chairs being pulled into position is confirmation of the 10am squad meeting. Last Friday, TNS won 6-1 at Newtown in mid-Wales, in front of a crowd of 493, after successive league defeats for the first time in five years had left them reeling. Since then all footage has focused on Fiorentina, runners-up in the Conference League for the past two years.
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Dan Leach, the club’s head of sports science and player performance, carrying out hydration level tests for each of the players (above left). The club’s crest – marking the heritage of their Oswestry and Llansantffraid roots – in the home team’s dressing room at Park Hall stadium (above right).
Craig Harrison, the TNS manager, attended Fiorentina’s Serie A win over Lazio last month but says anyone ribbing him about bagging a weekend in Florence on the basis of a work mission is forgetting his flying phobia. “I’m making sure I’m getting Greece and Slovenia, so every cloud,” says the assistant manager, Chris Seargeant, alluding to December’s matches against Panathinaikos and Celje.
Seargeant has already been to Dublin to watch Shamrock Rovers. “You prefer Guinness anyway, don’t you?” says a laughing Phil Davies, who doubles up as head of medical and kit man but whose title, really, knows no bounds. “If something needs doing, I’ll do it,” Davies says.
The pennants above the stadium bar talk to TNS’s travels: Champions League qualifiers at Apoel Nicosia, Anderlecht and Tre Penne, Europa League qualifiers at CSKA Sofia and Ludogorets. The Fiorentina fixture, however, is their first in Italy and this is the first time a Welsh league club has progressed beyond the qualifying rounds of a Uefa competition. In order to meet regulations, TNS will play their home matches at Shrewsbury Town, 19 miles down the A5. Attendances at Park Hall average about 300.
Mike Harris, the TNS chairman, has dreamed of this stage since he merged Llansantffraid (who became Total Network Solutions, named after the company he founded) and Oswestry Town in 2003. TNS, who have always been registered with the Football Association of Wales, returned for pre-season in May and have played eight European games since July, including in Hungary, Lithuania, Moldova and Montenegro.
“I don’t think many people believed we could do it,” says Harris. “The gravitas of the game is still sinking in.”
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European team’s pennants, souvenirs from TNS’s previous European exploits, hang above the bar at Park Hall.
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The Cymru Premier trophy, one of the many on display (above left), a photograph, mounted on the corridor wall at Park Hall, shows TNS in Champions League qualifying action against Legia Warsaw in 2013 (above right).
Everyone wants to play. Connor Roberts, the 31-year-old goalkeeper who is among the Manchester United fans in the TNS squad, hopes to share a pitch with David de Gea, who joined Fiorentina in August. Roberts has asked Eric Ramsay, the former United first-team coach and TNS youngster now in charge of Minnesota United, to play the role of fixer.
“He speaks fluent Spanish so I’ve asked him to get in touch with De Gea to give me five minutes, or at least his shirt,” Roberts says. “I’m definitely going to try and chew his ear off. I need to ask him about his save at Old Trafford against Real Madrid, to prevent Cristiano Ronaldo from scoring [in October 2018]because it was just incredible. He made it look like it was a simple volley. He is arguably one of the best shot-stoppers the Premier League has had.”
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Connor Roberts, TNS goalkeeper (above), Craig Harrison, TNS head coach (below left) and Danny Redmond, TNS captain (below right).
Ramsay’s brother, Alex, works as a part-time goalkeeper coach at TNS and puts Roberts through his paces before a seven-a-side game at the end of the session. Earlier, Harrison walked through defensive set plays. “Defend it till the death,” he says, stressing the importance of reacting to the second phase. Later, Harrison poses as an awkward target man jostling against his centre-backs Jack Bodenham and Blaine Hudson. “They’re not going to get as good as that tomorrow,” Harrison says, a broad grin on his face.
The razzmatazz of the tie is obvious. “Watching Gazzetta Football Italia in the 90s was a huge thing, wasn’t it?” says Harrison. “Everyone watched Serie A, the Batistutas of this world. I think Italian football was at its best then, probably better than the Premier League.
“Paul Gascoigne went out to play there – he moved to Lazio when he was the best player in England – and when he came back, we played together at Middlesbrough. We’re from the same Gateshead area, we played for the same Redheugh boys’ club.”
For the 46-year-old Harrison, in his second stint in charge of TNS after spells with Hartlepool, Bangor City and Connah’s Quay Nomads, that scouting trip to Fiorentina offered a bizarre moment. “I texted [the chief operating officer] Ian Williams when I saw the LED advertising hoardings around the pitch flashing up ‘Fiorentina v The New Saints’, the two badges and the date of the game. It was: ‘Wow, we’ve done all right here.’”
Danny Redmond, the captain, says the players’ WhatsApp group was buzzing at the draw. There was a commotion in Monaco, where the draw was held, too. “A bit of noise came from our party when our name came out,” says Harrison. “Searge went: ‘Yes.’ The whole auditorium was like: ‘What’s going on here?’ It is an amazing David v Goliath game.”
TNS are the only professional club in the Welsh top flight and operate on an annual budget of £1.2m – their highest-paid player takes home about £1,200 a week – but Davies is one of three members of full-time first-team staff. The coaches Simon Spender, who played with Gareth Bale for Wales Under-21s, Simon Smith and Seargeant also fulfil roles in the academy.
Harrison is adamant no Conference League team will have fewer hands. “Transfermarkt value Fiorentina’s squad at about €300m, ours at €3m,” says Harrison, who had to cope with last season’s top goalscorer, Brad Young, departing for the Saudi Pro League last month for £190,000, a record Welsh top-flight sale.
Last season, Davies spent three months moonlighting as a sports scientist. “Very often I’m gluing players’ boots back together,” he says, grabbing a pair in the treatment room, a cave of tape, strappings, lotions and medical solutions. “I could be taking someone’s toenail off, squeezing someone’s blood blister … I’ve been out there trying to take coaching sessions with injured players. I’m there doing drills and they will look at me like: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’ And they’re right. But you do pick things up.”
Unsurprisingly, Chelsea are favourites to win the Conference League. For TNS, it is a case of role reversal. The Invincibles banner at the ground says as much; last season TNS went unbeaten across the 32-game season (winning 30, drawing two) en route to a 16th league title. Domestically, TNS are undoubtedly the biggest fish, and therefore the biggest scalp; Harris tells of league rivals being ecstatic at earning a draw against them.
Regardless of the challenge and relentless schedule (TNS face 10 games in October), Harrison is confident his side can reach the knockout phase. “Seven points and a good goal difference will probably get you through,” he says. “Eight definitely will. We’re not there just to tick off a box: ‘I’ve played at Fiorentina.’” The basic facts make them feel they have a chance. “It’s just a field with lines on and 22 players going at it,” Roberts says.
At the same time, there is no masking the size of the occasion. “It is up there as the biggest game of our lives,” says Redmond, the former Everton, Wigan and Hamilton Academical midfielder. Adrian Cieslewicz, a former Manchester City youngster who joined TNS a decade ago, recognises the strides made.
“The dream has been to get through to the group stage in Europe – it has been a long time coming for any Welsh team,” says the 33-year-old, whose son, another United fan, has helped with his pre-match homework on De Gea.
Harris says TNS have gained followers from South Africa, North America and beyond. “My mum is Italian, so it’s the best draw we could’ve got,” says Leach. “She doesn’t follow football but she knows Fiorentina because she went to university in Florence.”
There is another, unlikely, subplot. Davies’s partner Rachel’s late grandmother, Francesca, grew up in Florence; Francesca was on a train in Trieste when it was intercepted by Nazis. Francesca was allowed out of a concentration camp because she spoke numerous languages and could act as an interpreter, a role which enabled her to meet someone from the British Red Cross, who took her to Rhosllanerchrugog, a village four miles from nearby Wrexham.
From Flint to Florence, via Ferencvaros, TNS are determined to savour a special occasion. They will fly back from Pisa to Manchester at 10.30am on Friday before travelling to south Wales the following afternoon, braced for a shift in surroundings. “I joked with my missus: ‘If you want to come to Florence, then you’ve got to come to Briton Ferry on the Sunday as well,” says Roberts, laughing. “The away changing rooms are a little tight – you’re pretty much getting changed outside.”
As Harrison, fresh from debating his team selection with Seargeant and Davies, heads out of his office, I wish him all the best for the trip to Italy. “We might need it,” comes the reply.
