The quest to qualify for the richest match in world football will begin amid humble surroundings on Friday.
Brentford’s homely Griffin Park ground, among tightly packed terraced houses in suburban West London, holds just over 12,500 fans and is best known for having an authentic English pub on every corner.
It is there that the underdogs among the four play-off contenders for promotion to the Premier League take on Middlesbrough in the home leg of their semi-final before visiting the altogether grander Riverside Stadium a week later.
The other clubs chasing a place at the Wembley final on May 25, in which victory is now estimated to be worth £130 million (Dh726.9m), are bitter East Anglian rivals Ipswich Town and Norwich City, who meet on Saturday and the following Saturday.
Brentford are the team who have captured the public imagination, however, in chasing their second successive promotion, 12 months after ascending from the third tier of English football and following in the footsteps of AFC Bournemouth, promoted to the top flight for the first time last week.
The long road from obscurity was smoothed by the arrival three years ago as majority shareholder of life-long supporter Matthew Benham, a former professional gambler who founded a sports betting company based on statistical analysis.
That data-based approach to football has since brought him into conflict with Brentford’s popular manager Mark Warburton and as a result Warburton and his assistant, the former Scotland international David Weir, have chosen to leave at the end of the season even if they have taken the club to the top flight for the first time since 1947.
Having been beaten twice this season by Middlesbrough, who finished seven points above them, and then scraped into the play-offs on the final day of the regular season after a late dip in form, Brentford know they are the outsiders.
Warburton described the 4-0 defeat at the Riverside in September as one of their worst performances of the season, though he believes his side were unlucky to lose the return match 1-0 in January.
Those results mean Middlesbrough have won five and drawn one of the last six League meetings between the clubs, who have rarely found themselves in the same division during the past 70 years.
The north-east club, Uefa Cup finalists in 2006, have traditionally regarded themselves as a top-division side who occasionally drop into the second tier.
They did so in 2009 and have rarely looked like returning since then until this season, when head coach Aitor Karanka, the Spanish former assistant manager of Real Madrid, has overseen a campaign based on tight defence and all-round strength.
The lowest scorers among the top eight teams – with 68 goals compared to Brentford’s 78 – they had much the best defensive record, conceding only 37 times in 46 games.
Striker Patrick Bamford, 21, on loan from Premier League champions Chelsea, was nevertheless named Championship Player of the Year.
Ipswich’s forthright manager Mick McCarthy, who once took the Republic of Ireland to the last 16 of the World Cup, said he was “astounded” that Bamford won the individual award ahead of his striker Daryl Murphy, whose 27 goals in an unfancied side were eight more than the Chelsea loanee.
Ipswich will be heavily dependent on Murphy in their 96th and 97th meetings with Norwich, who are the favourites and have had the better of their neighbours in winning the last four games against them, including both of this season’s.
With a £5.14 billion television deal beginning in two seasons, playing in the Premier League will be even more lucrative but, for the four teams hoping to follow Bournemouth and Watford into the big time, it is all about the next two games.
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