The Ghelamco Arena, with its sleek, glass-panelled exterior, looks more like an out-of-town conference centre than a football stadium and as the Europa Conference League belatedly reached its business end, West Ham were at last made to earn their keep.
David Moyes’s side have breezed through the competition thus far, winning ten matches on the spin and scoring 25 goals in the process, their last-16 tie taking them, literally, to a seaside holiday resort.
Against a KAA Gent side in good form, however, they were served a reminder that no trophy will come cheap. A 1-1 draw here leaves the tie finely poised ahead of next week’s return at the London Stadium, a match that will now be laced with more jeopardy than any the club have played in Europe since last season’s semi-final defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt.
This was not a game that began - obvious jibes about the status of Uefa’s third-tier competition aside - with the feel of a major European quarter-final, nor of a particularly hostile away assignment, blue skies and an early evening kick-off in keeping with the relaxed, quaint feel of this charming city.
But by the end, West Ham were clinging on, looking more like the desperate Premier League iteration of themselves than the imperious European adventurers as the home side grew in confidence, firing 20 shots at Alphonse Areola’s goal to the visitors’ four.
Hugo Cuypers’ powerful effort at the end of a fine move was the only one of those to beat the French ‘keeper, cancelling out Danny Ings’ back-post tap-in, but Gift Orban - scorer of 14 goals in 12 games since being plucked from the Norwegian second tier in January - almost added an outrageous winner, hitting the bar with a looping bicycle kick.
Moyes paid the price for declining to field his strongest team, making six changes from Saturday’s win at Fulham and handing rare chances to the likes of Ben Johnson and Manuel Lanzini, the former in particular looking woefully rusty and an unfamiliar 4-3-1-2 system failing to click. Sunday’s visit of leaders Arsenal was no doubt on his mind and the balancing act between relegation fight and European challenge is a unique one but Moyes’s selection was a gamble that did not pay off, though it did not quite backfire either.
At the end of it all, the Hammers will head back to London tomorrow morning knowing a state of parity flatters them far more than their opponents, though not without the sense that they, too, might have snuck off with a slender lead.
Nayef Aguerd had a first-half goal rightly ruled out for handball, Davy Roef’s blushes spared as VAR spotted the Moroccan had back-handed Roger Federer-style into the net after the Gent ‘keeper’s spill.
Late on, VAR again made a worthy intervention after Kamil Piatkowski’s sensational last-man tackle on Lucas Paqueta had initially seen him shown a red card, the review ensuring a generally poor night showing from referee Tasos Sidiropolous did not define the tie. Paqueta had made chances, too, for Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio, the former with a sensational threaded pass in the Brazilian’s best creative display for some time, despite only coming off the bench with 16 minutes to play.
West Ham will need more of that incision in seven days’ time, when their hopes of reaching a second successive European semi-final rest on what is now effectively a one-off knockout tie.
