'The best pub team in the world'

Since humble beginnings in a Gibraltarian pub, Bruno's Magpies are preparing for European football

Many people have come up with wild and wonderful ideas at the pub. Most come to nothing, some get tested, and for Louis Perry, one creates a football club that makes it into the UEFA Europa Conference League.

He moved to Gibraltar before the country at the tip of Spain had joined UEFA, having played for his county’s Under-18s team back in England and competed in some men’s football. After being unable to find a club to play for at his new home, Perry took matters into his own hands.

As he explains to World Soccer: “My nan had a bar in Gibraltar called Bruno’s Bar & Restaurant at the time. I basically went to them and said: ‘I’m an expat, there’s loads of expats around, would you sponsor the team?’ They said yeah, paid the £500 per team and Bruno’s Magpies was formed.”

The second half of that name is down to Mick Embleton, a Newcastle United supporter whose demand for being manager was that the club would play in black and white and be called the Magpies. Perry, a Portsmouth fan, obliged and says: “We started there, a group of blokes out of a pub, going to the pub before the game, after the game and enjoying football again.”

Gibraltar had seen applications to join UEFA rejected in both 1999 and 2007 but became the governing body's 54th member in 2013 - just when the Magpies were starting out. As Perry puts it: "None of us knew this was going to happen, but effectively overnight everyone could then start competing for Europe".

They were far off thinking about that, though. "Our first two trials were on the beach in La Linea," Perry recalls. "We couldn't get pitch allocations and me and Mick were trying to gauge how good people were by playing on a beach. You can't make it up".