“Some might say we will find a brighter day.”
— Oasis, “Some Might Say”
Bournemouth’s European dreams aren’t hard to comprehend. This is a club that didn’t believe it could be anywhere close to these heights not all that long ago, mostly because there was very little reason to believe it could.
Bournemouth was a League Two side as recently as the 2009-10 season, having narrowly avoided dropping out of the Football League altogether the year before. The Cherries were promoted to League One that spring, spent three seasons there and found their way into the Championship by 2013. Two years later, Bournemouth was in the Premier League, completing a rise through English football that happened quickly enough that there probably wasn’t much time for anyone around the club to properly comprehend what was happening.
It has bounced between the top flight and second division since, though even that description makes Bournemouth’s recent history sound considerably more ordinary than it actually is. The club that once had to worry about its continued existence is currently expanding Vitality Stadium from just over 11,000 seats to more than 20,000, a project Bournemouth says will help secure its long-term success and sustainability. There is something fitting about that happening now, because the stadium itself has started to become one of the few remaining parts of Bournemouth that still looks like it belongs to the club it used to be.
Everything else has changed.
