As Ryan Yates gently urged Vitor Pereira to celebrate in front of the travelling fans in Denmark, it provided a momentary heart-warming reminder of what Europa League football was meant to be about for Nottingham Forest.
Prior to kick-off, all the talk had been about the merits of Forest being in this competition. How their participation in European football for the first time in three decades had potentially damaged their hopes of Premier League survival, that it had become a weight around their necks.
That conversation has not gone away. It will resume again in the build-up to a huge game against fellow strugglers Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday with only one point separating the two teams. And there may yet be a toll to be paid for a match that felt draining on a physical and emotional level for those involved in the penalty shoot-out win in over Midtjylland in Herning.
But all of that was pushed to one side for one night at least, as Vitor Pereira’s side delivered a performance that, whatever happens from this point on, will live long in the memories of Forest fans — and particularly those who had travelled to see their side become the first to beat Midtjylland in any competition on home soil this season.
Their 2-1 win on the night after extra time was only sufficient for a penalty shootout, with the scores 2-2 on aggregate. But there truly would have been no justice had the football gods dictated that Yates in particular would end up on the losing side.
The Forest captain has scored in all top-five tiers of English football, amid loan spells with Barrow, Shrewsbury, Notts County and Scunthorpe early in his career. But it is unlikely that any of those previous strikes will have meant as much to him as the left-footed thunderbolt that put Forest 2-0 ahead.
Ryan Yates was one of Nottingham Forest’s best players in Herning (Patrik Lundin/Getty Images)
The midfielder even thought he had put the tie to bed in extra time, when he guided home a powerful header, only to have it chalked off for a narrow offside call. So there was not quite the fairytale ending that this tie deserved, with Forest instead progressing after Morgan Gibbs-White, Ibrahim Sangare and Neco Williams all cooly converted from the spot to secure a 3-0 shootout win.
Although the next chapter of this European story will be one that will mean a great deal to the Portuguese, who will be reunited with the Porto side he was youth team coach, assistant manager and manager of. When they won this competition in 2011, he was assistant to Andrea Villas-Boas.
Pereira will have been happy with many elements of what unfolded because on a night when he made the Premier League his priority, Forest still progressed.
In the summer, Forest invested £200m to make 13 additions to their squad, with the intention of effectively being able to field two separate teams, allowing them to compete on the European stage while also building on their seventh-placed finish in May. Until now, too many of those players were still to make a sustained impact. Three of them — Oleksandr Zinchenko, Douglas Luiz and Arnaud Kalimuendo — have already departed.
Forest, amid the chaos of three changes in manager, have largely had to rely on players who were part of the squad under Nuno Espirito Santo last season. And when Pereira made nine changes to his starting XI, to include many of those figures, there were many who saw it as being a symbolic raising of the white flag, as an acceptance that nothing was more important than the game at Tottenham.
Pereira had spoken to the Forest hierarchy about their priorities; about whether they shared his belief that staying in the Premier League was more important. But, while his team selection definitely reflected that, some of those fringe figures chose the perfect time to stand tall. “They had the chance and they took it with two hands, with their hearts, with their spirit and everything,” said Pereira in an interview with the BBC.
Dilane Bakwa, Omari Hutchinson, Dan Ndoye and James McAtee had cost a combined total of around £130million during the summer transfer window but were yet to live up to those price tags. Ndoye and, more so, Hutchinson had shown flashes of their quality and, if you talk to people around the club, they will all tell you how McAtee constantly stands out on the training ground because of his creativity and class.
It says much that one of the only criticisms of Pereira was that he took off McAtee, Hutchinson and Bakwa too soon. Few would have predicted that scenario prior to kick-off. Bakwa’s cross, headed back into the danger zone by Nikola Milenkovic, was the catalyst for Nico Dominguez’ opening goal. McAtee fed Yates the ball ahead of his wonderful strike.
Nottingham Forest players celebrate after Nicolas Dominguez (C) scored the opening goal (Bo Amstrup / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images)
This was McAtee and Bakwa’s best games for Forest by some distance. Lorenzo Lucca, a player who could not convince Pereira to give him a place on the bench last weekend, led the line with strength and purpose. A clutch of players suggested they could yet be relied upon during the critical finale to the campaign.
The creativity and verve with which Forest played in the first half should have seen them take a firmer hold on the tie, to kill it off without the need for extra time or penalties. Extra time will have been the last thing Forest wanted ahead of Sunday’s trip to north London.
But while Gibbs-White, Williams, Ola Aina, Murillo, Elliot Anderson and Ibrahim Sangare all came off the bench, none of Forest’s key players played more than an hour. It should not have too much of a physical impact, as they look to recover their energy for another massive game.
It could have a mental impact, in a positive sense, however, after Forest registered their second win of Pereira’s tenure. Now would be a good time to build momentum.
And with eight Premier League games left to play and that Europa League quarter-final against Porto, Forest will hope it is not the last time Pereira can be seen to indulge in some fist-pumping celebrations in front of their fans.