Flynn Downes will be a tricky man to get hold of should West Ham reach this summer’s Europa Conference League final in Prague.
“I’ve already had two people onto me,” the Essex-born midfielder says of the inevitable scramble for tickets given “everyone I know supports West Ham”.
“I had one person text me yesterday about it. The phone could get put on airplane mode for a few weeks.”
It is a football fan’s divine right to dream and, lord knows, that for West Ham supporters there has been a lot more fading and dying than realising among hopes for this season so far.
Those fretting from the moment the group-stage draw was made about running out of annual leave or which cousin’s wedding might clash with the final looked presumptuous.
And yet, suddenly, almost by stealth, West Ham are within sight of European glory, a target now too attainable to belong only to the realms of fan fantasy.
12 months ago, at the midway stage of their Europa League quarter-final tie against Lyon, David Moyes’s side were faced with having to beat the French side away from home and then, as seemed likely at the time, a semi-final against Barcelona.
On Thursday, they must get past Gent at the London Stadium, with the scores level at 1-1 from the first leg, to set up a probable last-four clash against Anderlecht, who they have beaten twice this season already.
The draw could not have opened up more invitingly had Moses himself been unscrewing UEFA’s fiddly plastic balls, though Moyes is not getting carried away with talk of a trip to the Czech capital in June.
“We have to earn the right to get through into a semi-final,” the Scot said on Wednesday. “We earned the right to win the group, we earned the right to be in the position we’re in, we earned the right to be in this competition by finishing seventh in the Premier League last year.”
There is a justified wariness, given Gent really ought to be bringing a lead to London this evening, having troubled West Ham in Belgium last week, in particular through lively forward Gift Orban, who struck the bar with a bicycle-kick late on and was rested for the weekend’s draw against Mechelen.
And wariness, too, of something that has been missing from West Ham’s European campaign all season long — genuine jeopardy.
West Ham are within sight of European glory, a target now too attainable to belong only to the realms of fan fantasy
It is testament to the Hammers’ form in Europe that at no point before now have they been on the verge of elimination. Moyes on Wednesday compared his side’s marathon season to the Grand National, but their Euro journey — 10 wins and a draw — has been more of a Flat breeze-up Newmarket’s Rowley Mile to this point.
It has been a run notably, and from Moyes’s perspective, welcomingly devoid of drama, but were it all to end now, which are the memorable games and iconic moments that would stack up against those of last season, of Sevilla at home and Lyon away?
Michail Antonio’s curler at Cypriot minnows AEK Larnaca, or the sight of him warming up in astroturf trainers on Danish side Silkeborg’s artificial surface? Gianluca Scamacca’s fine winner off the bench in Anderlecht, a ‘remember when he looked good’ moment in what could prove a fleeting Hammers career? It would not make much of a montage.
But with the biggest European crowd of the season expected at the London Stadium, and a place in a second straight European semi-final on the line, this, at last, looks a night made for heroes.
