Kevin Keen hailed every member of his West Ham United U18 squad and backroom staff following Wednesday’s energy-sapping 4-2 extra-time FA Youth Cup quarter-final win at Ipswich Town.
The Hammers had to come from a goal down twice against a stubborn home team reduced to ten men while they held a 1-0 lead late in the first half of normal time, before two goals late in the additional half-hour saw Keen’s side through to the last-four.
The lead coach was proud of his players and backroom team for the way they handled a fourth consecutive away tie and earned their place in the semi-finals for the first time since Tony Carr’s side lifted the Club’s third Youth Cup in 1999.
With manager David Moyes and Academy manager Kenny Brown looking on, Keen’s assistant Gerard Prenderville, who has coached many of the team for a decade, delivered a decisive rallying cry at half-time in extra-time that the Irons ultimately responded to with two decisive late strikes.
The goals were shared, with captain Gideon Kodua, Callum Marshall, substitute Ryan Battrum and Divin Mubama on target, and every player played their part on a cold night at Portman Road, where 663 West Ham fans gave their young charges vocal backing among a vociferous 3,721-strong crowd.
It was a bit of a rollercoaster.
The lads are in the dressing room and they’re obviously tired but absolutely delighted.
I have to say before we say anything else that Ipswich were fantastic. To go down to ten men just before half-time and the way they battled and some of the football they played was a real challenge for us, so full credit to them.
I thought them and their coaching staff were fantastic.
We’ve been drawn away every round in the Youth Cup so far and it’s quite a difficult thing to keep going away.
We’ve been to Sheffield United, Burnley, Stoke City and now here to Ipswich.
They had fantastic support and by the way we had fantastic support too. It doesn’t happen very often, but what an experience for them, with Regan Clayton getting booed and keeping his head and making sure we didn’t get a red card ourselves.
Little things like that are priceless for their education and going further in the game.
It wasn’t just the starting eleven, either, as Ryan came on and scored a goal and also had an assist, and Liam Jones and Ty Akpata too.
We talk about it being a squad game and they came on in extra-time and really helped turn the game for us.
People talk about it being hard against ten men and it’s a strange one because in a one-off game you’re thinking ‘We’re alright, we’re eleven against ten, we’ll win this’ but they were excellent and we could have been the fall guy.
We kept our patience, their goalkeeper made a couple of good saves and it’s turned into a really good night.
Hopefully the injuries are not too bad [to Ollie Scarles and Lewis Orford] as Ollie took a real knock on the side of the pitch.
The coaching staff, sports science, physios and everyone through to Tony Falco the kit man have done a fantastic job for me this year.
In half-time of extra-time I turned round to Gerard Prenderville who has been with these kids for a long time and said ‘Come on, this is your moment, give me something’ and his speech was absolutely fantastic.
He spoke about how most of these lads have been here since they were nine, have been together and traveled around the country with their parents, and the sacrifices they’ve made, and it was a real rallying cry to get that result and to score the two goals, so it was a real big-up to Gerard tonight.
