Nottingham Forest one step closer to a return to the Premier League

Anyone who is a fan of the sport is familiar with the great and unique exploits of the Nottinghamshire county team, a team in the late 1970s that was able to collect incredible successes such as the Premier League and Champions League. But as always in football, there is another side to the coin. After Brian Clough's victories, Nottingham Forest has not been able to establish itself in the complicated English football universe, shuttling between the first and second leagues. Everything could soon change, however, the conditional is still required.

The date to mark on the calendar is 29 May, the day on which the noble decadence will face Huddersfield at Wembley, for the last 90 minutes of the season that are worth a place in the Premier League. A date that could mark a return to the top flight that has been missing for 23 years, exactly since the 1998/99 season when the team then led by Ron Atkinson failed to climb out of the relegation zone, finishing the championship in 20th position, thus inevitably ending up in the Football League Championship.

The team currently coached by Steve Cooper has not shone in recent years, however, giving more sorrow than joy. Last year they were one step away from relegation to the third division, as was the case in 2004/05, but the red and whites seem ready to reverse this trend. Starting with yesterday, when they came out on top at home against Sheffield United by winning the penalty lottery after 120 minutes ended in a draw. If the English team managed to make it to the end, part of the credit goes to its goalkeeper, Brice Samba. The Congolese goalkeeper was the absolute hero of the evening in Nottigham, saving the three penalty kicks that allowed his team to reach the final. Samba then revealed the secret of his unbeaten record at the end of the game, the English team's goalkeeper pinning the penalty takers and their habits on his water bottle, a common practice among goalkeepers but one that does not always work.

Nottingham Forest, after years and seasons spent in oblivion, are close to collecting their debt to the English league and finally putting their negative record behind them. The Nottinghamshire county team is in fact the first club in the history of football to have won the old Champions League and then be relegated to the third division. An achievement that would also be important for Macron, the Italian brand that since 2018 has believed in the revival of the old champions of England, proposing eye-catching designs and patterns that take inspiration from the past while always looking to the future. And the Premier League could be an important showcase for Macron, which has been challenging the Nike-adidas duopoly for years and which also wants to impose itself in the English top division, a league where it has not yet managed to conclude an agreement with any of the 20 teams present.