Football Manager fanatic travels 1,000 miles to see team in real life

A video game fanatic who travelled more than 1,000 miles for a football match achieved his "dream" of seeing his adopted club play in the flesh on Saturday.

>Italian Andrea Lai has been playing the Football Manager series for almost 20 years and one day chose a new club, at random, as his new team to manage.

>With an average attendance of about 2,500, the team from a town near the north coast of Northern Ireland are a world away from Bologna, the Italian club Lai also supports.

>Last week, he travelled from Italy to see Coleraine Football Club play their final league game of the season as they pipped Glentoran to second place and a guaranteed place in European competition.

'Enormous to me'Lai first played as Coleraine in Football Manager seven years ago and has won a heap of virtual silverware since.

>The 39 year old from Imola, who travelled alone, said his trip was "wonderful".

>"Astonishing - it was enormous to me because for many years I was considering coming, but it was too far," he told BBC News NI.

>"I decided to come by myself. I enjoyed some of the great landscapes in Northern Ireland, but the main reason, really, it was the Saturday match against Glentoran, and then I built my trip based on it."

>Founded in 1927, Coleraine have won the league title in Northern Ireland once, in 1973, as well as six Irish Cups and two League Cups.

>The team have been regular fixtures at the top end of the NIFL Premiership - Northern Ireland's top division - in recent years.

>In 2024 the club was taken over and a 24-year-old local property developer became its new majority owner.

>When Lai started playing with the club in Football Manager it was a semi-professional outfit.

>"I start playing with this non-pro team and I totally fell in love for it," he said.

>"The part-time contract, all the players, and bringing them to success, winning the premiership, winning the Irish Cup, and bringing Coleraine in the European competition was awesome."

>Lai started following Coleraine in real life too, buying items from the club shop online.

>Through this he got to know people involved in the club and made the decision to come to the last game of the 2025-26 league season.

>He turned out to be something of a lucky charm as they won 6-2 and qualified for European football for the first time since 2022, where they will enter the Europa Conference League's first qualifying round.

>Lai got to meet players and staff including hat-trick hero Will Patching and his physical counterpart, the real Coleraine manager Ruaidhri Higgins.

>With European football secured for next season, Lai said he "cannot miss this kind of opportunity" to watch the club live again.

>"I'm already looking forward to our next year to come," he said.

>There could be more success to come for Coleraine this season as they face Dungannon Swifts in the Irish Cup final on Saturday.

>Lai said he thought the club had "a very good possibility to win the game".

>"I will find a way to follow the game, to follow Coleraine even out in Italy," he said.

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