Craig Harrison is searching for a context that illustrates the chasm between his The New Saints (TNS) team and the opponents that await them in the first evening of the Europa Conference League tonight.
“If you look at Transfermarkt (the football website), TNS’ squad value is around €3million (£2.5m, $3.32m),” the club’s manager says. “Then you’ve got Fiorentina’s, which is about €300million. That’s your context. We’re light years away.”
Harrison, though, is not complaining. Far from it. The biggest night in TNS’ history comes in Florence and there is only excitement at the prospect of having a trip to Fiorentina sandwiched in between away games at Newtown and Britton Ferry in the Cymru Premier.
While Welsh clubs who play in the English leagues have had famous continental nights, no side from the top division of Welsh football has ever made it this far in a European competition. It is Dafydd versus Goliath.
“It’s a fantastic achievement and we need to make sure we don’t undercook that,” Harrison says. “It’s something the club and the owner have been working towards for 25 years.”
TNS are nothing if not unique. They are the all-conquering Welsh outfit that plays its home games in England, the product of a 2003 merger between two clubs — Llansantffraid and Oswestry Town — based either side of the border. Crowds for games at their Park Hall home (£140 for an adult season ticket) typically fall between 200 and 300 fans, yet their annual qualification for European competitions and the financial assistance that brings allows them to be run as the only full-time operation in the Welsh domestic league.
“I’ve always had a sense of wanting to do something different,” Mike Harris, the club’s long-standing owner, tells The Athletic. “I’ve always been someone who’s driven by people telling me I can’t do something. It goes all the way back to my early twenties when people would say I couldn’t run my own business.
“When I got involved in football, I was told I couldn’t do this and that. I enjoy hearing someone saying, ‘That’s not possible, you’ll never do that’ because I like to prove them wrong.”
The unlikely story of TNS has Harris planted firmly at its centre. As a successful local businessman born and raised in nearby Welshpool, he was initially invited to sponsor Llansantffraid in 1996 through the burgeoning telecoms company he had founded, Total Network Solutions.
A year later the club was rebranded as Total Network Solutions FC and by 2003 a merger had been ratified with financially-stricken Oswestry Town, also a member of the League of Wales despite being in the eponymous market town three miles over the Welsh border
Oswestry has remained home ever since but Harris’ sale of Total Network Solutions to British Telecom in 2006 brought another change of name. The New Saints, retaining the TNS initials, are now firmly established as the dominant force in their domestic game.
“We’ve always been told that you’re not very good unless you’re part of the English game,” says Harris, who calls Cardiff City, Swansea City, Wrexham and Newport County the “exiles”, owing to their historic membership of the English Football League.
“It’s very difficult to get into peoples’ heads that there’s an equally good product over the border that’s emerging. This is hopefully the start of the next chapter. We’ve not been to this stage of Europe before so this is a new milestone in the journey of The New Saints and Welsh football.”
TNS, powered by Harris’ investment, are driving the advancement of Cymru Premier. The 12-club league is ranked 50th out of 55 in UEFA’s coefficients, above only North Macedonia, Belarus, Andorra, Gibraltar and San Marino. Each year brings qualifiers, like a 7-0 loss to Manchester City in 2003 and a 6-0 defeat to Liverpool two years later, but little else.
Until this season. Although reliant on second and third chances when exiting the Champions League and Europa League qualification processes with defeats to Ferencvaros and Petrocub, a 3-0 aggregate win over Lithuanian side FK Panevezys in August assured TNS of a place in the Conference League’s 36-team league phase that begins today. “It turns the light on to our domestic game,” adds Harris.
Progress beyond Panevezys has also assured TNS of a transformative windfall. Each of the 36 clubs reaching the league phase of the Europa Conference League, including Chelsea, Real Betis and FC Copenhagen, each receive an equal share of €3.17million (£2.64m). TNS’s run to this point had already secured them €700,000 in qualification, while a win in any of their six games would bring another €400,000.
TNS stand to triple their annual turnover this season, generating further income from home games played at nearby Shrewsbury Town following UEFA’s approval of a switch deeper into England. Park Hall, limited to a 3,000 capacity, did not meet stadium requirements to host games beyond qualifiers.
“I think UEFA like our story,” Harris explains. “You do need money in football but I think our club demonstrates you can have success without it being money beyond any normal businessman.
“I don’t think any football club should be dependent on any one individual but we’ve provided the necessary resources to keep on developing. We’ve done that with the ground, our facilities, our women’s team.
“This year will probably be a very successful year for us financially but we’ll look to plough that back into the club. The team will be completely self-sufficient this year and we will make a profit. But that will go a long way to covering the cost of improving our facilities next to our ground. Hopefully it’ll help us to produce more talented young players in the community.”
Other Welsh clubs have taken note. As first reported by the BBC, Wales’ four EFL clubs have proposed entering the Welsh League Cup, offering a route to European qualification that had been closed off. Harris is relaxed at the talk of change that will likely see one less club from Cymru Premier get a shot at the Europa Conference League.
“It’s a generational journey we’re on and the ambition of the club isn’t to stop here,” adds Harris, who says he has enjoyed Wrexham’s rise under Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. “Perhaps it won’t be our club, it might be someone else, but I believe there’ll be someone who goes further still and starts taking points from some of these opponents in the groups with a few giantkillings along the way.
“Then it’ll really mean the exiled clubs, as they call them, start to wonder why they’re scratching around in League One and League Two when they could be playing in Europe. That’s a long way off but we need to create the opportunity and structure to make it possible.”
The expectation is that “a couple of hundred” TNS fans will make it to the Stadio Artemio Franchi this evening. It is comfortably the most glamorous of their six group games — the others are against Astana from Kazakhstan, Ireland’s Shamrock Rovers, Djurgarden from Sweden, Greece’s Panathinaikos, and Celje from Slovenia — and the one that announces the next step on an improbable journey.
Players know it might never get bigger than this, the challenge of facing David de Gea, Cristiano Biraghi and Moise Kean and so, too, does Harrison.
The month that has passed since the draw was held in Monaco has seen TNS’s manager tasked with retaining perspective but the personal demons he has fought reinforce it will be a night worth enjoying. Harrison’s playing career was snuffed out after he broke his leg playing for Crystal Palace’s reserves in 2002: after 19 months of fruitless rehabilitation, he was forced to retire.
“I had to finish my career at 24 or 25 and that took me a long, long time to get over,” he says. “I don’t mind talking about the fact there were some really dark days. Football wasn’t like it is now with the support mechanisms in place. There’s help for mental health but I had to be very lucky to have a fantastic family and friends around me to help me through it.
“I’ve still probably got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about not having the longevity of career that I thought I deserved. I still ask ‘Why did it happen?’ I’ve got it under control now but for a good 15 years there was something that was really deep-rooted in me. It still is but I use it as a positive now.”
Harrison’s early ambitions had not been for management.
“We know football is not a forgiving sport so from a manager’s point of view you know there’s a short shelf life at times,” he says. “But I know that whatever happens to me in my career now, nothing could be as bad as the day I had to retire through injury. That was the worst possible day for any footballer, certainly in their mid-twenties. I’d played every day possible to get where I was and then it was taken away. Throw whatever you like at me now but it won’t be as bad as that.”
The Welsh domestic game has given Harrison opportunities he had not foreseen in management. Initially starting out at Airbus UK, he moved to TNS in 2011 to win the first of eight domestic titles with the club. There were spells with Hartlepool United, Bangor City and Connah’s Quay Nomads but a return to TNS two years ago has resumed their dominance. Together they won 30 and drew two of their Cymru Premier League games last season.
TNS, Harrison insists, have talent. EFL experience, albeit in the lower leagues, runs through the team and the summer transfer window saw their star player, Brad Young, signed by Saudi Pro League club Al-Orobah for £190,000.
“Hopefully this will push Welsh football to the forefront a bit because it’s unduly criticised,” he says. “There are some good players, coaches and managers in the league.
“I’m far from being Welsh — I’m closer to Scotland, coming from Gateshead (in north-east England). But I’ve lived in the Chester area, right on the border, for 20 years and I’ve been involved in maybe 400 or 500 games as a manager in the Welsh system.
“To get this far for Welsh football is great. Yes, it’s fantastic for TNS but for Welsh football, we’re very proud to be representing Wales.”
If there is hope to take to Florence, it is knowing that TNS are well-versed in European adventures. They have played more games in UEFA competitions than they have in their domestic league this season and it is Harris’ belief that they can put some points on the board in the group phase.
“Fiorentina have been in the final of this competition for the last two seasons so you can see what we’re up against,” he says. “Perhaps it’s good to get this one out of the way but I just hope the players are able to enjoy themselves. I’m determined that we’ll come through this competition and we won’t be a team with nul points.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)
