The sight of 60-year-old David Moyes galloping down the touchline and shaving off a couple of decades or so in the process to celebrate Jarrod Bowen’s last-minute winner that secured his first major trophy was one of sport’s true magic moments and that has been reflected by how Merseyside football fans – poignantly both Everton and Liverpool supporters – have reacted to congratulate him.
Afterwards he quipped: “I couldn’t do a full Mourinho knee slide as the grass was a bit dry and I’d have ended up on my belly,” but boy did he enjoy the experience – and quite rightly so. These are the special occasions that dedicated football people like Moyes put in all the hard yards for to be rewarded with and in truth it’s been a long time coming.
West Ham United’s 2-1 victory over Fiorentina was the culmination of a lifetime’s work for the Glaswegian who has put in over a thousand matches as a manager to get to the point where he has got his hands on one of the game’s big prizes (nobody really counts the 2-0 Community Shield win over Wigan Athletic in his first fixture as Manchester United boss as that’s a piece of silverware which at times has been shared). The significance of the achievement in Prague was obvious in Moyes’ body language from the aforementioned dash with his arms raised, the hugs for captain Declan Rice with the trophy and changing room video footage that showing him dancing to the Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).
