LOWLAND League side Caledonian Braves have made history by becoming the first Scottish side to take part in a one-of-a-kind European tournament, winning 10-0.
The Bellshill-based club last week took on German side Bucholzer FC in the Fenix Trophy, a tournament that invites non-league clubs from across the continent.
Sixteen teams will compete this year in a knockout phase until the last four teams standing emerge to play the finals in Italy.
Leonardo Aleotti, co-founder of the tournament, said: “It’s really hard to find the X factor, so to speak, when it comes to finding and choosing the teams in the cup.
“Generally speaking, the aim of the Fenix trophy is to put together clubs that are in non-league and are creating a community around them as a tool to create good that goes beyond the pitch.
“The tournament was born because we felt the need to change the paradigm of non-professional football because the issue we saw, especially in Italy, is that non-professional football gets dragged into an imitation of professional football without understanding that it’s a different environment.
“In non-professional football, you do things out of passion so you need to be fully aware of this and create the most entertaining, exciting and fun experience for the ones involved.”
Entertaining was certainly the word for the game under the lights of Alliance Park in Bellshill.
Goals varied from long-range strikes to fantastic team efforts with liquid build-up. There was plenty to see for the fans who braved the cold and the 300+ watching online from across the world.
Braves manager Ricky Waddell saw it all from the touchline. He said: “It feels great because we rarely … no, we never have as much possession as that in the Lowland League.
“I’ve got players who can dominate possession-based games and players who can defend and be more sturdy, but that’s what we work on, different moments and aspects of the game, there’s not one style of play that you necessarily need to have in my opinion, at this level, you need to be good at all of it.”
Despite their 10-goal cushion, The Braves will err on the side of caution when they travel to Germany for the second leg this week.
Waddell added: “You want to approach every game and do it properly.
“What I don’t want to happen is we go over there and we’re complacent, thinking we’re better than them and showing the mentality of that because you never know, they might have six or seven really good players that have just missed this trip.
“I think the professional attitude for me is to go and win the game, play the game in isolation and hopefully progress from there.”
It won’t be all work and no play, however – at the end of the day, this little Lowland League side get to travel all the way to Germany and see the sites of Deutschland as a team.
And no-one has thought about that less than Waddell: “My passport’s in the drawer; I’ve not looked at any clothes … me and my wife haven’t even spoken about the fact that I’m away for three days.
“As a player, I played in Asia and America and it was brilliant to see different things and I want that for my players to go and see different things as young footballers like different ways of playing.
“Whatever the game brings next week, it’ll definitely be something different and that’s a good thing.”
This experience of foreign cultures won’t be new to the Braves as they’ve been a transcontinental club since their earliest days.
Founded as EduSport Academy, the club sought to bring young French talents across the water to provide them with football and education over the course of a year.
They joined the Scottish footballing pyramid in 2011 before adopting their fan-ownership model and rebranding as the Caledonian Braves in 2019, putting community at the forefront.
This fan ownership comes in the form of their WeFunder campaign where fans from across the world can buy shares and the Braves reached their $2.5 million goal on Christmas Day last year.
Founding owner Chris Ewing has seen the club grow from its inception all the way through to these milestones.
Having returned from his home in Paris to see the game, he said: “I spoke to Leo [Aleotti] and he was really keen to get us in; I think that’s a testament to the ownership community we’ve built through the WeFunder campaign.
“I felt, as the founder owner, that given the opportunity to be involved in such a competition, I would have regretted it if we had refused – if you can do something that’s unique and can inspire people, then you’re duty bound to a certain extent.
“It’s a bit cheesy and a wee bit romantic but I was down at my mum’s house in Pollok and I drove by a nursery where I use to play as a boy and I was thinking, I can’t believe I’ve got a football team and they’re playing against a team who’s coming in from Hamburg … to play our team!”
The magic of football lives on under the lights of Alliance Park, with the Fenix trophy a shining reminder of why the game is so beautiful.
Bucholzer FC will host Caledonian Braves for the second leg in Hamburg on January 1 4, kicking off at 7pm GMT.
You can catch the second dose of the competition for free on the Fenix Trophy YouTube channel.
