Football
Nick Miller, ESPN.com writer 7y

Highly-regarded Wagner seeks to fulfill Huddersfield's Premier League dream

HUDDERSFIELD, England -- David Wagner has never been to a game at Wembley before, let alone managed one. So ahead of taking Huddersfield there for Monday's Championship playoff final against Reading, has he asked his good friend Jurgen Klopp, who took charge of Borussia Dortmund in the 2013 Champions League final and Liverpool in the 2016 League Cup final at the stadium, for any tips?

"No, because he wasn't successful!" Wagner said with a laugh, noting that Klopp lost both those games.

The very fact that Wagner is relaxed enough to joke a few days before arguably the biggest single game in English football might be a good sign for Huddersfield. The latest estimates suggest a promoted team will earn at least £170 million for a single season in the Premier League and north of £290m, should they survive for longer.

That's not bad at all, but while it could do wonders for a club with the modest size of Huddersfield, the money is transient: The glory of achieving promotion with this team will last forever. And particularly when nobody -- not even Wagner -- expected them to be there.

"Absolutely not," Wagner said when asked if he thought promotion was possible last summer. "We said at the beginning of the season that we'd like to play without a target, so we'd have no limits. We had a good start, then after the first half of the season, when we'd played each team once, I thought 'OK, we have a chance of making the playoffs.'"

Wagner, born and raised in Germany but who won eight caps for the United States thanks to his American father, was hired last season with the primary aim of avoiding relegation from the Championship, which Huddersfield managed.

Steady progression was the realistic aim after that, but for virtually all of this season, they've been in the top six; even automatic promotion looked plausible at some points. Calling it a miracle would be too strong, but it's clear that Wagner has done a remarkable job.

"We have a feeling that, apart from the Reading supporters, nearly everyone backs us to get this fairytale to a happy end," said the 45-year-old. "Everyone in England, even Europe, backs Huddersfield Town to get this fairy tale, after the fairy tale of Leicester, to have a happy end."

Wagner is fond of equating his side's run with last season's Premier League champions, but in the last decade alone, smaller clubs like Bournemouth, Blackpool and Burnley have all played in the top flight. As such, comparing Huddersfield to the single most remarkable achievement in English domestic football history is a bit much, but the advantages of painting his team as perennial underdogs are obvious.

"I think we're 18th or 19th in the budget table," said Wagner. "I think the gap between us and, let's say, Newcastle, is bigger than the gap between Leicester and Chelsea. We are a small dog, and this hasn't changed over the season, but we are ambitious. Just because you're a small dog, it doesn't mean you're not able to be quick, to have endurance, to be mobile, to create other weapons."

Wagner has built a promotion-chasing side with a canny mix of solid Championship players (like midfielder Jonathan Hogg), Premier League loanees (Chelsea's Izzy Brown, Manchester City's Aaron Mooy) and shrewd purchases from Germany (defenders Christopher Schindler and Michael Hefele).

But he's also been proactive in trying to foster a strong bond between his players: Before this season, for example, the whole squad spent three nights on a remote, uninhabited Swedish island with no running water, electricity and certainly no phones. The players had to forage for food and shelter themselves.

"We don't socialise that much off the pitch, but our interesting preseason trip gave us a stronger bond than other Championship teams," said Hogg this week.

"I am [Huddersfield's] first manager from outside the British Isles," Wagner said earlier this year, "Maybe there are as many foreign players as there has ever been, so we thought: 'How can we make the players bind together very quickly?'"

Steve Archibald's old line about team spirit being an "illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory" does spring to mind whenever footballers or managers cite it as a contributory factor to their success, but Wagner is smart enough to realise that, with a small budget and collection of broadly unheralded players, any attempt to improve things in that respect is worthwhile.

Before the playoff final, the players took a rather more comfortable trip to Portugal, but in a further attempt to encourage togetherness, their families were also invited along. Huddersfield trained in the morning and enjoyed the Iberian sun in the afternoon with partners and children.

Wagner also insists that players live within 15 miles of the club's training ground, which itself is a grounding factor. It's well-appointed -- the groundsman has altered the training pitch to reflect the exact dimensions of the Wembley playing turf -- but also doubles as a community centre.

Members of the public queue alongside players for their lunch and mill around wishing the squad luck for the challenge ahead, comfortable enough to ask for pictures and autographs. It's all part of the feel-good element that Wagner has brought to Huddersfield. Almost more than results, perhaps the most encouraging part of his regime is the enthusiasm he has engendered in the stands.

"We are now averaging (crowds of) 20,000, where last season it was 12,000," Wagner said in January. "Everyone feels like there's something happening, and everybody wants to be part of this."

If Huddersfield do go up, some longstanding fans will be able to buy season tickets for a mere £100, thanks to a longstanding promise made by chairman Dean Hoyle.

But while this game might represent the club's best chance for promotion in many years, it might not be the same story for Wagner. Win or lose at Wembley, he will be in demand the next time a mid/lower-level Premier League job becomes available.

"I haven't really thought about it," he said this week, when asked what promotion would mean for himself and the club. "I haven't spoken to the chairman about it. I said, and he agreed, it makes no sense to waste energy thinking about what we could do. If this is the case, we will very quickly come together and find ideas, create ideas. But before, it makes no sense. We have to keep our energy and focus on Monday."

In December, Wagner was approached by Bundesliga side Wolfsburg, a Champions League participant just last season. But he turned them down in favour of staying at Huddersfield.

"It's important for me to clarify that my focus is on moving forward at Huddersfield Town," he said at the time. "We want to develop what has been a good season so far into a great one."

Victory over Reading on Monday would certainly achieve that.

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