Cardiff and Blackpool on the brink of the big-time

With the iconic Blackpool Tower in the background, a stall sells flags in the team colours.

Rewind nine years to 2001. Manchester United exited the Champions League to Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals. Arsenal went out to Spanish opposition at the same stage. In English football, it sometimes seems little changes. Yet sometimes the scale of change is astonishing. That same year, four clubs were promoted from England's fourth flight, then called Division Three. Two of them were Cardiff City and Blackpool. Today, after they meet in the Championship play-off final, one will become a Premier League club with the promise of a £90 million (Dh474m) pot of gold.

Cardiff have not been in the top flight for 48 years, Blackpool for 39. Like Burnley, who were absent for 33 years or Wigan, Reading and Hull, none of whom had reached such a level in their history, they can bring a story of unexpected achievement. They are proof that while there are abundant flaws in the running of English football the 20 Premier League clubs' combined debt is around £3 billion there is still scope for the upwardly mobile.

Blackpool's ascent, after being pre-season relegation favourites and despite drawing the division's second-lowest gates, is improbable. That it is done playing a progressive brand of football Charlie Adam, their captain, has provided 18 goals from midfield is all the more admirable. Their surge, including eight wins in 10 games, has prompted nostalgic mentions of their greatest players, Jimmy Armfield, Stan Mortensen and Sir Stanley Matthews.

"It's expansive, attacking football and the lads have been absolutely magnificent," said Ian Holloway, their manager. "They have made it an environment of encouragement so we can play freely with no fear. But it's the energy of the whole club. "It's changing and it's actually starting to believe in itself because I believe in it. I believe in the people here, I believe in the history of the place."

Yet there is a modern twist to this tale. Should Holloway's unlikely band be promoted, they will share a bonus of £5 million. "It is pretty big," said Ian Evatt, the defender, with a hint of understatement. "We've known since the start of the season and in many ways it has been our objective to get the bonus." They have momentum, an invaluable commodity in play-off campaigns. They also have Holloway, a manager who both encourages and rails against a reputation as a quotable eccentric. A specialist when unfancied, he faltered when granted resources at Leicester and has prospered with loan signings and discards at Bloomfield Road.

"I love Blackpool," he said in September. "We're very similar. We both look better in the dark." He is looking increasingly attractive to suitors. Like Dave Jones, his Cardiff counterpart, he figured on the West Ham shortlist to replace Gianfranco Zola. For much of Jones's five-year reign, Cardiff have been the nearly men, providing players Aaron Ramsey, Chris Gunter, Roger Johnson, Cameron Jerome and Michael Chopra for Premier League clubs without joining their alumni in the top flight.

Now the returning Chopra, along with goalscoring midfielder Peter Whittingham, tops the bill at the new Cardiff City Stadium. They have the facilities, whereas Blackpool's Bloomfield Road is manifestly unprepared for the Premier League. But having survived a winding-up order from the Inland Revenue, they have endured trauma in their more luxurious surroundings. If a new ground would have been unthinkable in 2001, so would much else. Foreign money has arrived in places that, a decade ago, were forgotten clubs. Dato Chan Tien Ghee, Cardiff's new Malaysian owner, has taken over from Peter Ridsdale, the former Leeds chairman. Latvian businessman Valery Belokon is an investor in Blackpool.

At both clubs, change is a constant. One will experience the biggest of all by trading the lower leagues for the elite today. [e-mail]