West Ham United icon Tony Cottee leads chants in Frankfurt city centre
West Ham United crashed out of the Europa League on Thursday evening (5 May) as they were beaten 1-0 away at Eintracht Frankfurt.
The Irons were already 2-1 down from the first leg at the London Stadium and needed a remarkable comeback to overturn the deficit at a sold-out Deutsche Bank Park.
It wasn’t to be though as Aaron Cresswell and David Moyes were shown red cards and Rafael Santos Borre scored the night’s only goal to send the Germans to the final in Seville where they will face Rangers.
Before the game though, spirits were high among the travelling supporters and right amongst them in Frankfurt city centre was club icon Tony Cottee.
Twitter user whufcpaul1 posted a video of Cottee standing on a fountain, leading loud chants in the town square as claret and blue took over the German city.
The Daily Star also reported the story as the 56-year-old fully immersed himself in the occasion before the soul-crushing defeat later that evening.
One-off
It’s brilliant to see our former players getting involved with the supporters to this extent but it’s probably just a one-off in reality.
You wouldn’t expect Cottee to be hanging from the London 2012 Olympics sculpture near the London Stadium belting out such chants before a Carabao Cup game against Rochdale.
At the same time though, no one would want that because it would make these occasions feel that little less special and who knows when the Hammers will make a European semi-final again.
It is looking highly likely that West Ham will be playing Europa Conference League football next season with Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur destined to beat them to the Europa League places in the Premier League.
So maybe another semi-final isn’t far away but the club has to learn from their errors this season and fix the mistakes next time they find themselves this deep into a competition.
In other West Ham news, these European giants are reportedly keen on signing one of Moyes’ main men but for a pitifully low transfer fee.
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