Nottingham Forest's return to Europe

Say Nottingham Forest and you immediately think of Brian Clough, one of the most romantic managers in the history of English football. You think of back-to-back European Cups, of a European story unparalleled in its unexpected and unpredictable path: a newly promoted team from the then First Division that won the league title and then showed up like a Cinderella at the ball of the greats, exiting with the trophy for two consecutive seasons. There, Clough returned to breathe after his famous and devastating stint as manager of Leeds, charting a fairytale arc that lasted eighteen seasons.

The continental journey of a now-faded noble of English football restarts this week in the Europa League in Seville , after a thirty-year wait: the last time in the cup competition was under the command of Frank Clark, another icon of the club, having been player, coach, and president, European champion on the pitch in 1979 and manager from 1993 to 1996, taking over the technical helm right at the end of Clough's wonderful period. That time, the run ended in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup, the edition that brought fame to the world of a young Marseille playmaker who enchanted in the number 7 shirt of Bordeaux: Zinedine Zidane . The English were swept away by Bayern Munich, with Franz Beckenbauer on the bench , one of those anomalies that occurred in the UEFA of the past, a battleship featuring Schöll and Klinsmann, a still-not-quite-crepuscular Matthäus and Papin, the totem Kahn in goal and Ciriaco Sforza in midfield. From then on, for the "Garibaldi Reds", the oblivion of relegations, years spent even in League One, and the seemingly endless purgatory of the Championship.

This was supposed to be the year of a grand return to Europe, but instead Nottingham Forest is dealing with a seismic shift . Nuno Espirito Santo, who last season led the team into the Champions League zone for a long time before slumping to seventh place, is no longer on the bench: his relationship with the fiery owner Evangelos Marinakis has suddenly exploded. "We were in almost daily contact, but unfortunately this year, after certain events, it's no longer the same," he told the BBC a few days before being sacked after starting with four points from three Premier League games. Tensions between the two had already been quite high last season, especially when Marinakis appeared on the sidelines after a draw against Leicester with the intention of publicly berating the Portuguese.

Some had imagined that his successor could be José Mourinho, but instead the club's board, led since January 2025 by former Roma player Lina Souloukou, chose Ange Postecoglou , the man who won the last Europa League at the helm of Tottenham but has so far collected two defeats and a draw in three games, in a heated atmosphere that does not seem destined to improve.

The transfer window saw the club draw heavily from Italian clubs (Ndoye, Douglas Luiz, Savona), and there was no shortage of typical monstrous outlays, from €43 million for Hutchinson to €35 million for Bakwa and €30 million for Kalimuendo. Postecoglou is taking on an awkward legacy, as Espirito Santo has performed exceptionally well since his arrival in December 2023—even though seventh place would only have earned him a spot in the Conference League, which became the Europa League due to Crystal Palace's relegation due to their shared ownership with Lyon—and he had the team on his side. The fact that one of the two defeats came in the Carabao Cup against Championship side Swansea certainly didn't help. Including the season finale against Tottenham, Postecoglou is on a nine-match winless streak in the Premier League (seven defeats, two draws), an unprecedented feat in his long career as a journeyman. "The players are starting to understand what I want from them, and for me that's a positive sign," he said after the draw with Burnley. Now all he has to do is make sense of a return to Europe that's been awaited for thirty years.

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