CURTIS EDWARDS and Jamie Hopcutt have risen from the football scrapheap to face Arsenal.
Middlesbrough-reject Edwards was working on building sites while Hopcutt was a part-timer at Tadcaster Albion after York let him go in 2010.
Yet now the pair are midfield partners for Graham Potter’s Ostersunds in Sweden’s top tier and about to face the Gunners in the last 32 of the Europa League.
Edwards, 24, said: “If you said this would happen to us when we’d just been released we’d have laughed.”
He ended up in Sweden in 2015 after a Facebook message from a friend, who was playing for fifth-tier team Ytterhogdal.
Edwards added: “I thought I was finished in England.
“I was childish. I didn’t understand what it took to make it as a professional. I got distracted with friends and alcohol.
“When my friend, who was playing in Sweden, asked me to come, I thought it would be nice to get away from Middlesbrough.
“A year after I moved to Ytterhogdal, I got a chance at Ostersunds.”
Hopcutt, 25, was already established at the Jamtkraft Arena, having joined Ostersunds in 2012, when they were in Sweden’s third tier. He said: “I got released by York at 18 and went to Ossett Town.
“I fell out of love with football. I was on the bench and it wasn’t nice football, not my style. Some of my ex-youth team-mates were at Tadcaster so I went there.
“Then I got an email about a trial for Ostersunds at Warwick University. I thought, ‘I’ll give it one last try’. I did well, and then it was planned to go to Sweden.”
Edwards and Hopcutt are loving life in Ostersund — despite its remote location and freezing temperatures.
They have Swedish girlfriends and have become fan favourites.
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Hopcutt said: “They chant, ‘Vi alskar Hopcutt’, which is, ‘We love Hopcutt’. They call Curtis ‘The Sheriff’ because of his beard. They’ve got a flag of him wearing a cowboy hat!”
Hopcutt knows the odds are stacked against his side — but they have defied them throughout their Europa League campaign.
He said: “We’re confident. We’ve shown in the Europa League that everyone steps up. If we can pull this off, it’ll be incredible.”
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