Little Truro City came so close to pulling off the greatest fairytale story in English football as they came 2nd to Newcastle United in the Premier League in 2041. That meant they secured not only the club’s first taste of European football in its third season in the top tier, but went straight into the Champions League.
Trevelyan’s financial management saw Truro begin the summer with £213m in the bank. Slightly confusingly, having already announced plans to further expand the stadium by this summer, the Truro board announced new plans to increase the capacity by another 8,819, which will be completed by January. The board also raised the youth category to the highest available tier for £10.2m. And a sign of the club’s growing reputation was a pretty well-known Spanish club called FC Barcelona accepting an offer of a friendly at Truro City Stadium, which Barca won 2-0, after Truro’s pre-season tour of Australia.
Trevelyan knew he had to strengthen his squad in key areas to compete in both the league and in Europe, without needing a mass of signings. He splashed a new club record £50m on promising striker Ilja Isbouts from Willem II and snapped up Japanese midfielder Hiroaki Sakaguchi for £7.75m from Yokohama F Marinos.
Trevelyan decided to change up the shape a little this season, moving away from a narrow 4-3-3 to a narrow 4-1-3-2. Bernard Touré drops back into midfield to provide some width as a mezzala with star man Joao Paulo given freedom to roam on the right-hand side of the midfield trio.
Challenging Premier League Start
The bookies massively boosted their expectations of Truro, predicting them to finish 7th with title odds of 33/1 alongside Chelsea. Man United are 2/1 favourites followed by Man City (5/2), holders Newcastle (15/2), Spurs (11/11) and Aston Villa (12/1). Truro also had a player in the dream 11 for the first time as Joao Paulo made the midfield and is considered the fourth-best player in the league.
The season began with a string of difficult fixtures as Truro faced eight of last season’s top nine in their first eight games. They began with a trip to Spurs and fell to a 1-0 defeat. But they responded in style as Paulo and striker Maurício Genofre braces and Isbouts’ first goal for the club inspired a 5-0 thumping of Reading. Genofre sprained his ankle and his replacement Takaaki Wakabayashi opened the scoring in a wild 4-4 at Man City before drawing 1-1 at home to Arsenal and Man United and losing 2-1 at champions Newcastle, 2-0 at home to Villa and 1-0 at Chelsea.
That left Truro 13th after 9 games and, while the start had been difficult, Trevelyan decided to revert to the narrow 4-3-3. That proved a wise move as Isbouts, who dropped back into an enganche role, scored twice in a 3-1 win at home to Forest, which kickstarted their season as they won five on the bounce. They lost at Southampton but got back to form, including a quickfire late Wakabayashi double as they thrashed Liverpool 4-0, which took them into the top four at the end of December.
Truro City in the Champions League
Truro City’s first taste of continental football saw them go straight into the Champions League. And they got a tricky set of fixtures that annoyingly started by hosting Spurs, before trips to European giants Juventus and Real Madrid with a couple of potentially winnable games.
Truro made their Champions League bow with that annoying game at home to Spurs, and Wakabayashi’s strike earned a 1-1 as Truro set a new gate receipts record of £875k. Their first European away day saw Cornwall descend on Rotterdam for a trip to Feyenoord and a late Enzo Parra strike edged a 3-2 victory for Truro’s first continental win. Sakaguchi scored a brilliant hat trick as a rotated side thrashed Malmo 5-0 before an impressive defensive effort limited Juventus to three shots in a 0-0 in Turin. Truro dominated Dinamo 4-1, led by the underperforming Touré scoring one and making another, to sit in a mightily impressive 5th after five games. That position got even better as Sakaguchi and Isbouts goals downed Benfica 2-1 to go 4th.
The Champions League resumed with the exciting trip to Santiago Bernabéu, where they got a dream start as Silva sent Isbouts through to put Truro ahead at Real Madrid. But Real dominated the game, their left back scored just before and after halftime and they bagged an easy win. Truro wrapped up with an impressive 5-0 thumping of Atalanta, led by a Genofre hat trick and a Sakaguchi brace. That helped them secure 8th place to qualify automatically.
The last 16 saw Truro again have to face Spurs. A great performance by goalkeeper David Navalón, who made six saves, and Paulo’s 20-yard strike earned a 1-0 away win before a superb home performance saw Genofre’s first-half double lead a comfortable 3-0 victory, without Spurs even having a shot on target. Another all-English tie followed as Truro faced Man United in the quarter finals. United nicked a tight game 1-0 with an early goal from a corner in the first leg at Old Trafford. The second leg saw Trevelyan celebrate 1,000 matches in charge of Truro City. But they again fell behind to a fluke and struggled to get going until good pressure from a goal kick ended up with Genofre getting a goal back. And the pressure told against as a loose backpass went straight to homegrown striker Dion Beeney to level things up on 81 minutes. Nothing happened in extra time until another lucky deflection rebounded to United’s striker to nick a probably undeserved win. United went on to reach the Final but lost 4-3 to Newcastle, who rescued their season after a disastrous title defence.
Smashing Truro’s Wage Structure Before Exciting Title Race
Homegrown midfielder Adul Turay had been moaning about gametime for about two years and, after just 85 league games since coming through the acedemy in 2035, he got his wish and moved to Saudi for a new club record sale of £26.5m. Trevelyan also moved on goalshy striker Wakabayashi to Roma for £11.5m and midfielder Adélcio to Monza for £8m on deadline day.
Truro had a mass of players with 24 months on their contracts and had been begging for new deals for over a year. So Trevelyan had no option but to smash his careful wage spending, including Genofre moving onto £275k per week, Parra on £220k and captain Alejandro Silva on £160k. He also replaced Turay by signing Richard Ferguson, who’d requested to leave Man City, for £29m and promising full back Antonio Caro for £20m from Atlético.
Exciting times at Truro saw the stadium expansion completed in January, taking Truro City Stadium to an all-seater capacity of 34,961. The first game at their expanded home saw leaders Spurs come to Cornwall, and Genofre’s goal earned a solid point. That seemingly sparked Genofre, who’d only scored 2 in 14 league games before the new year, into life as he bagged a hat trick in a 4-1 thumping of Sunderland. The challenging opening fixtures reversed, starting with a tough week of fixtures in early February. Genofre earned a point at Arsenal before a 2-1 win in a a new club record stadium sellout against Newcastle, who were down in 13th in a pathetic title defence, and very late Genofre and Paulo goals secured a deserved 2-0 win at 10-man Man United.
The Truro squad proved how good it had become as rotated sides beat Chelsea 1-0 with a goal by homegrown midfielder Kane Atkinson and won 2-0 at Forest through midfield wonderkid Sascha Ablinger and Sakaguchi’s penalty. Meanwhile, Spurs lost their game in hand at Leicester then drew 2-2 at Bristol City, which sent Truro top of the league for the first time. A 0-0 at Brighton put Spurs back top before an exciting moment saw homegrown Beeney bag a hat trick in a 4-0 domination of bottom-side Hull.
That left the 2042 title race as a four-horse race, but was probably going to be battled out between the top three. With five games remaining, Truro led Spurs by 3 points, with City another 3 points back and Villa a further 3 points back. And all four teams had some relatively favourable fixtures.
Game 1 – Southampton (6th, home): The run-in began well as Adlinger turned home Parra’s cross after 6 minutes and a solid defensive effort earned a 1-0 win. Spurs lost a ridiculous match 5-4 at Forest, who scored after 87 and 88 minutes, then Villa beat City 2-0, so Truro opened up a 6-point lead.
Game 2 – Brentford (17th, away): Truro kept the stellar form going as Genofre’s tap-in just before the break and Ablinger’s powerful hit just after it were enough for a 2-1 win despite struggling Brentford’s late consolation. City drew 1-1 at home to Forest, Villa won 3-1 at Newcastle then Spurs did the most Spursy thing ever by losing 2-0 at home to Brighton. That moved Truro 9 points clear with three games remaining and within touching distance of their famous first major trophy.
Game 3 – Leicester (8th, home): One more point was all Truro needed to lift their maiden titleand they started well as Ablinger slid the ball through for Genofre to smash into the top corner after 8 minutes. The striker had another goal disallowed 3 minutes later but, within 60 seconds, Truro’s lead was doubled as left back Vanderson Pereira finished off a great team move. The title was all-but confirmed after half an hour as Ablinger passed inside to Genofre, who spotted the keeper off his line and cheekily chipped him from 25 yards. Leicester rudely scored their first shot from a corner but Truro controlled the second half and Genofre wrapped up his hat trick 15 minutes from time.
17 years since life in the Vanarama South, Truro City were Champions of England!!
Truro finished the campaign with a draw at Liverpool and a 1-0 win at Bristol City. That saw them win the title by 7 points from Villa with Spurs dropping to 4th and City to 5th. They claimed their maiden title with 81 points after 24 wins, 9 draws and 5 defeats, all of which were before Christmas. They scored 66 and conceded an impressive league-low 26. Genofre was the 3rd-top scorer with 16 in 32, 78 behind City striker Pasquale Baert, Silva got the 6th-most assists with 10, and Navalón kept the 3rd-most clean sheets with 16, only conceding 25 in 34. Paulo won the league’s Goal of the Season with a stunner against Reading, Trevelyan deservedly won Manager of the Year, and defenders Pereira, Marin Borko and Parra made the PFA Team of the Year alongside Genofre.
Truro’s success was very much built on a solid defence and a methodical passing game. They boasted both the best goals against and expected goals against (0.68 and 0.85 per game) and the most clean sheets (19). That said, they conceded the 3rd-most goals from corners (10) but didn’t concede a single goal from free kicks.
They also had the 2nd-most possession (59%), the best pass completion ratio (89%), completed the most passes (20,481, over 500 more than Arsenal and 1,000 more than Spurs), and had the most final third passes per game (96, 5 more than anyone else). And, despite not being among the top scorers, they actually had the biggest xG overperformance with a massive 15 over their xG of 51, which was just the 10th highest in the league. They also had the 7th-fewest shots in the league (381) but the 2nd-best conversion rate (17%).
Truro City: Champions of England
The rapid rise of Truro City was confirmed as Trevelyan’s exciting young squad, which still only had an average age of 22, stormed to the Premier League title. The excellent Genofre led the way with 27 goals in 44 games, which was 2 short of Jaze Kabia’s club record 29 set way back in the first season of the save in the Vanarama South. New boys Isbouts and Sakaguchi were excellent with 11 goals and 11 assists and 11 goals and 5 assists respectively. Paulo was alright with 9 goals and 3 assists, but his performances were worrying in light of interest from Real Madrid, Ablinger contributed 7 goals and 8 assists and Silva led the way with 11 assists.
A lack of goals continued to be the biggest challenge facing Trevelyan as he looked to defend Truro’s maiden title, potentially go a little stronger in the cups and give the Champions League another crack.
Join us on Saturday as we reflect on Trevelyan’s journey from Vanarama South to Champions of England and review Truro’s title winners. And we’ll be back to see if Truro could defend their first English title next Wednesday!
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