Soccer gatecrashed Britain’s summer sporting party scene on Thursday as West Ham United began their season just 39 days after their previous competitive match with a satisfactory 3-0 win over Andorran part-timers Lusitans in the Europa League.
On the day former men’s singles champion Rafael Nadal crashed out at Wimbledon and six days before the first Ashes Test, the start of the Champions and Europa League qualifiers this week underlined just how European club soccer is virtually a year-round affair.
This was just one of 48 matches on Thursday across the continent in the Europa League.
Photo: Bloomberg
While tennis fans were savoring their strawberries and cream in southwest London, 28 stops to the east on the District Line, West Ham’s punters were tucking into their first burgers and hot dogs of what will be their last-ever season at the Boleyn Ground in Upton Park, their home since 1904.
Next year the Hammers are moving into a new ground, the Olympic Stadium at nearby Stratford.
Although it took West Ham 40 minutes to make the breakthrough when Diafra Sakho nodded them in front, his second goal with the last kick of the first half and a header from James Tomkins after 58 minutes saw them coast home.
They were a makeshift mixture of first-choice players and teenagers, with centerback Reece Oxford, who captained the England Under-17 team when he was only 15, becoming the youngest first-team player in West Ham’s 120-year history at the age of 16 years, 198 days.
Former West Ham defender Slaven Bilic, their new manager, was given a rapturous welcome by the 35,000 crowd before the start and he watched from the stands. Academy director Terry Westley took charge.
Lusitans, runners-up in Andorra last season, did not manage an effort on target. West Ham were never troubled and would have won by a far bigger margin but for Lusitans’ goalkeeper Gerardo Rubio, who made some neat saves.
It was the Hammers’ first match in Europe for nine years after they qualified as one of UEFA’s three Fair Play winners, which is why their campaign has started so early.
They face the prospect of playing eight games to reach even the group stage, which does not start until mid-September with the second leg of this tie in Andorra on Thursday next week.
The start of the Premier League season is still more than a month away too, by which time the visit of Lusitans will probably seem as distant as a hazy holiday beach memory.
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