Ultimate underdogs: What's it like when lower-league teams qualify for Europe?

Portugal's big three are so dominant that many fans of other clubs also adopt Benfica, FC Porto or Sporting CP as their second team. Sad though it may seem, that alternative allegiance can sometimes feel like the only way they will ever have any silverware to celebrate.

One such supporter is Paulo Sarreira, a 49-year-old hotel owner in the small city of Torres Vedras around 30 miles north of Lisbon. He has a soft spot for Portuguese record champions Benfica, but his loyalties really lie with hometown club Torreense.

Sarreira never expected to see his local side win a trophy, but a fairytale run in last season's Taça de Portugal -- including a dramatic final victory over Sporting thanks to an extra-time goal from 38-year-old Cape Verde full-back Stopira -- saw Torreense become the first-ever cup winners from outside Portugal's top tier. Not only that, but that success earned them a place in this season's UEFA Europa League.

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"My memories of the final against Sporting are still very vivid in my mind," Sarreira tells ESPN. "All my friends from Torres Vedras that like Sporting wanted Torreense to win. They were crying. Everybody at the stadium knew that it was possible but for it to happen was completely crazy.

"The party went on until 3 or 4 in the morning in the centre of Torres Vedras; there were fireworks, music and speeches from the players. A truly magical and memorable moment."

Mixed emotions

The euphoria was tempered by the fact that Torreense missed out on promotion to the Primeira Liga in the promotion/relegation playoff against Casa Pia four days later, leaving the club in the second division for their maiden continental campaign. They make their European debut this Thursday in Norway against Lillestrøm, who also won their domestic cup as a second-tier side -- but also gained promotion to become a top-flight team.

"Realistically, the home game against Ararat and the away game against Lillestrøm look like the most winnable games," says Sarreira, who is excited by the draw and the prospect of Torreense going up against some of Europe's biggest names in the coming months.

In addition to Lillestrøm and Ararat, they will face Premier League side Sunderland, LaLiga club Real Sociedad, Scottish giants Celtic, Greece's Olympiacos, Hungary's Ferencváros and Poland's Lech Poznań and in the league phase. Sarreira is already planning his first European away trips with Torreense, and hopes to attend all four home games as well.

Switching stadiums

But the four home games -- starting with the visit of Sunderland in mid-October -- will not take place at Torreense's own Estádio Manuel Marques. The 2,500-capacity ground falls some way short of UEFA's criteria, forcing the club to relocate. They initially arranged to play 150 miles away in the Algarve before switching to the Estádio Dr. Magalhães Pessoa in Leiria, which is closer but still 50 miles away.

"It's always frustrating not being able to play at your own stadium," Sarreira says. "But I don't think this will affect the team. Everything that comes from these matches will be positive: the players' market value, experience and competitive rhythm will increase and, above all, the name of Torreense and Portuguese football will be taken to all four corners of the globe."

He does, however, concede the impact will not be exclusively positive. "The real problem will be the national championship with three matches a week; the team could suffer physically and might not cope with so many games in a short period of time."

That would be the last thing Torreense need, given that they have started the season with only one win from six games and are hovering above the relegation zone.

Continental challenges

That fixture congestion proved to be a thorn in the side for FC Vaduz of Liechtenstein, who were the last lower-league outfit to compete in a European group stage/league phase in 2022-23. They were in the Switzerland's second-tier Challenge League at the time -- Liechtenstein is the only UEFA member without its own league system and its seven clubs compete as guests across the border -- but qualified by winning the Liechtensteiner Cup and then successfully navigating the UEFA Conference League qualifying rounds.

"We qualified for the group phase and suddenly, as a second-tier Swiss side, we only had double matchweeks until the winter," Franz Burgmeier, a former Vaduz player who has served as the club's director of football since 2019, tells ESPN. "That was definitely one of the reasons why we weren't good in the league."

Vaduz were sucked into a relegation battle and ended the season in eighth place -- their worst league finish in the last decade.

The challenges were mental as well as physical. "We would go from the big stage on Thursday evenings when we were playing against the likes of [Apollon] Limassol and [AZ] Alkmaar to Sundays with games in Bellinzona and Yverdon in front of 300 fans," Burgmeier says. "That was extremely difficult for the players."

On top of that, different approaches were required for different competitions. "I always found the games at European level were a bit different in terms of the playing style. The Challenge League was often end-to-end for 90 minutes. The European matches were more tactical; there was more composure on the ball and you even had a little bit more time to build the play," Burgmeier says. "But we had the players to compete on that level."

Into the knockouts

Lower-league teams were a more regular feature of European football back in the days of the old European Cup Winners' Cup. The first example was Saint-Étienne, who won the 1962 Coupe de France in the same season they were relegated. But the most extreme case was Merthyr Tydfil, who won the 1987 Welsh Cup while in the English seventh tier and faced Atalanta, then of Serie B, in an extremely rare continental tie between two lower-league teams.

Since the Cup Winners' Cup was discontinued in 1999 and the UEFA Cup switched to a group format in 2004, only seven lower-league clubs have competed in a European group or league phase: Torreense and Vaduz, plus FC Zürich (UEL, 2016-17), Wigan Athletic (UEL, 2013-14), Birmingham City (UEL, 2011-12), Lausanne-Sport (UEL, 2010-11) and Alemannia Aachen (UEFA Cup, 2004-05).

Alemannia Aachen, who qualified as the runners-up in the 2004 DFB-Pokal, remain the only club to have reached the knockout stages. "It was the first season the UEFA Cup had groups, which was gold for Alemannia," says journalist Jonas Beck, an Aachen native who attended the group-stage matches as a supporter and worked as an intern in the club's media department during the knockout phase.

Moments that last a lifetime

"I was at the home games in Cologne [50 miles east of Aachen]," he says. "There was the match against Lille, 1-0. That was insane. It's your first [group] game and you win against a French top-flight team.

"Then I think we lost 2-0 away to Sevilla and drew 2-2 at home to Zenit St Petersburg. We saw that we could compete. And it was like: 'Okay, names don't play a role anymore.'

"Then came the game [against AEK] in Athens, which we needed to win to go through. There were only 5,000 spectators in this massive stadium ... A second-tier team simply didn't interest anyone. And you also sort of got the feeling that it didn't interest the players either. At some point, the team completely factored out the names and just played football."

It worked: two second-half goals sealed a 2-0 win and carried Alemannia into the knockouts. The run was brought to an end by AZ Alkmaar in the round of 32, but the fans will never forget the magic of their European adventure.

"It was indescribable. It was almost like being in a trance all the way through from the qualifying rounds to the knockouts. It was absurd," says Beck, who also pointed out the huge financial gain for a second-tier side. "We lurch from one insolvency to the next ... That success naturally put the club in an entirely new financial sphere."

Nowadays, the competition carries far greater financial rewards. Torreense will earn €4.31 million simply for participating in the Europa League, while each win is worth €450,000 and each draw brings in €150,000. Further prize money is possible depending on their final position in the league phase. For a club whose total squad market value, according to Transfermarkt, is under €20 million, it's a transformative amount of money -- even if they lose all eight league-phase games.

But whatever happens, for now at least, the team from Torres Vedras will have the undivided attention of their hometown fans.