The minnows who are one win away from the big time
FOR many of the Champions League heroes from Gibraltar’s Lincoln Red Imps, Wednesday night’s second leg against Celtic at Parkhead night represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fulfil their dream of becoming professional footballers.
Players like right-back Jean-Carlos Garcia, who will fly with his team-mates to Glasgow tomorrow having earned a week’s ‘special leave’ from his job as a plasterer, bricklayer and plumber’s mate.
Or midfielder Anthony Bardon, who played for Sheffield FC in the Evo-Stik League earlier this year and is now revving up for a battle with Celtic captain Scott Brown as Brendan Rodgers’ side try to avenge a humiliating 1-0 defeat on The Rock last week.
‘Everyone will have their eyes on this match,’ says Bardon. ‘If we can perform well, you never know. I have a year on my contract but if a club came in, I am sure Lincoln would let us go.
‘Jake Gosling at Bristol Rovers plays in the Gibraltar national team with us. He is a very good player but we have maybe five or six guys at the same level as him who could do well in (England’s) League One or Two.
‘The difference between England and Gibraltar is more style, we are much more tactically and technically aware. In England, it is more about entertainment and speed of play.’
Garcia, 24, laughs at being described as a labourer by Sky Sports after their shock victory. He actually spent the days after slaying Celtic helping to lay water supplies into housing while completing his bricklaying and plastering courses.
‘I get up at seven to start work at eight. I work until about half-past-three in the afternoon, maybe go to the beach for a couple of hours and then get myself ready for training at seven in the evening,’ he says about his average day.
‘I’m past the youth stage now but I still feel young. Obviously we know scouts and other teams are watching us and anything could happen.
‘It’s realistic to think the lowerranked teams in England or Scotland might be impressed by us, why not? We are part-timers but we train every day. We have dreams of making it. Anything can happen in football.
‘We don’t have the mentality of going out to lose. We saw what Iceland did at the Euros and Leicester City winning the Premier League. Football is different from 30 years ago. If a team is compact and works their socks off, you can get any result.’
The Red Imps players will get a bonus of £1,000 each if they can finish the job off against Celtic, a significant sum as they only earn around £200-a-week from football usually.
Victory will probably change Gibraltarian football forever. The club would receive €1million for reaching the third qualifying round, four times their annual wage bill.
With many of the Rock’s 30,000 population anxious about the consequences of the Brexit vote on their status as a British overseas territory bordering Spain, last week’s result has been a huge lift to national morale.
Along with their goalscorer Lee Casciaro, Bardon and Garcia have international experience to call upon.
Both represented Gibraltar in qualifiers for Euro 2016 when they came up against Germany, Poland, Republic of Ireland and Scotland, where they lost 6-1 at Hampden Park.
With players from Spain and Portugal, and a Uruguayan manager, the style is split between British grit and Latin technique.
Bardon accepts Celtic will be physically stronger and he thinks Rodgers will have them much better prepared than for the first leg.
‘I think they were maybe a bit tired because they’d had a very tough game against Maribor in Slovenia three days before,’ he said.
‘Sometimes when you travel after a game, you don’t really get recovery. Your legs can be tired. I think they will be more prepared this time.’
Bardon, 23, was born and raised in London and is one of the few Imps players who does not have a job outside football. He wants to be free in case an offer comes in from England, having previously played at a lower level with Bromley and Tooting & Mitcham.
‘I love Gibraltar but I didn’t want to get too comfortable living here. If I got a job and earned decent money, I wouldn’t want to leave. I’ve given myself three or four years to make it as a professional footballer,’ he says.
‘I would like to go from the National League upwards. I have developed as a player, played internationally. You learn a lot in these games and realise these guys aren’t that much better than us. They are good but we have proved we can compete against them.
‘We played against the likes of the Republic of Ireland. We held our own, 1-0 at half-time. Maybe we lacked that bit of fitness. If we had that at a professional club, we’d do well at League One or League Two.’
To emphasise that they shouldn’t be overawed by the Celtic players, Garcia recounts a story in the tunnel before he played against Germany.
‘I was shouting: “Vamos! (Come On)” as we were walking out, and Toni Kroos comes over and starts shouting it with me — he’d just joined Real Madrid and was learning Spanish at the time. It was a nice moment and proved to me it doesn’t matter how big the name is, every player is human.’
‘WE HAVE ALL SEEN WHAT ICELAND AND LEICESTER ACHIEVED’