After 126 years playing football exclusively against teams in England and Wales, tonight Bournemouth play in Europe for the very first time. They visit Real Sociedad in the first of eight Europa League fixtures that will take in opponents from Norway’s boreal forest to the Israeli desert via one of football’s great colosseums, the San Siro.
Bournemouth’s red and black stripes were inspired by the great AC Milan team of the 1960s, when the idea that the two would ever meet seemed far-fetched. Bournemouth & Boscombe Athletic, as they were known, were in the fourth tier of English football, and the club were down there again as recently as 2010 after narrowly avoiding liquidation.
