It was scrappy, it was messy, but West Ham only saw the beauty. They celebrated wildly when Michail Antonio bundled the ball over the line with 15 minutes left, completing a turnaround few people had anticipated, and in those moments it was possible to forget that the evening had been such a slog. Perhaps, then, it will only be when the dust settles that West Ham remember that they were going nowhere until the AZ Alkmaar goalkeeper Mat Ryan misjudged the flight of the ball and almost took Jarrod Bowen’s head off midway through the second half.
Nobody should make the mistake of thinking that David Moyes’s side are assured of reaching their first European final since 1976. In truth they toiled for long spells against a limited AZ side, creating little and treating the ball with insufficient care. Their football was unimaginative, too reliant on physical power and counterattacks, and for a while it seemed that the first leg of this Europa Conference League semi-final would be defined by Alphonse Areola handing AZ the lead when he allowed a soft shot from Tijjani Reijnders to squirm past him.
