The 125-year rise: how Brighton — and the underdogs — stopped asking for permission

The season where the underdogs stopped asking permission

Three thousand Brighton fans packed the Amsterdam Arena on a Thursday night in November 2023, more than double the number that had a seat inside the stadium. Manager Roberto de Zerbi stood before his players and told them to remember the city that had crossed the Channel for them, before they stepped onto the pitch against the "royalty of European football."

Brighton won 2-0 that night. It was the high point of their first European campaign in 123 years of existence.

Now, as the club celebrates its 125th anniversary around a visit from Arsenal, the Seagulls aren't just showing up against royalty — they're dethroning it. Their 3-0 demolition of the Gunners at the Amex Stadium this season was, in manager Fabian Hurzeler's words, a display of "intensity, togetherness and squad depth." His only plea to his players afterward: "Stay humble."

The Gtech awakening

Sixteen miles up the M4, another unassuming club is rewriting its own ceiling. Brentford stayed unbeaten in the Premier League by putting three second-half goals past Chelsea in a 3-0 win at the Gtech Community Stadium — a venue that didn't exist two decades ago and now hosts top-flight football as if it always had.

These aren't flukes. They're the harvest of decades of patient, unfashionable building.

For Brighton, the journey from near oblivion to Europe is documented by those who lived it. Paul Samrah, a lifelong fan who fought for regime change and then for the stadium, remembers August 2007 — the single most memorable moment of his support. Not a trophy. Not a promotion. The moment planning permission was granted for the stadium that opponents had given up fighting.

"We'd won our battle," he said.

It's a battle playing out across the footballing and sporting world this season. Wakefield Trinity reached their first Super League semi-final in history with a dominant play-off win over Leigh Leopards — tries from Tyson Smoothy, Tom Johnstone, Isaiah Vagana and Caius Faatili too much for the visitors, even after Wakefield lost a man to a red card.

The quiet empire-builders

In rugby union, the Black Ferns of New Zealand reminded everyone who sits at the top of the world rankings, cruising past Scotland 66-14 in the WXV Global Series at Hive Stadium. Ten tries — power prop Mo'omo'oga Palu blasting through, lock Maama Mo'onia Vaipulu finishing neatly — set a tempo the Scots simply could not live with.

Across the Atlantic, the Buffalo Bills' Josh Allen scored six touchdowns in the new Highmark Stadium, beating the Detroit Lions 41-31 in a venue that itself represents a rebirth.

And for British sports fans hungry for more free-to-air action, there's reason to celebrate: the BBC will broadcast the FIA World Rally Championship from 2027 to 2029, including all four days of Rally Scotland — the country's first WRC round since 2019. Welshman Elfyn Evans currently leads the 2026 championship with one round remaining.

England's cricket team, meanwhile, steamrolled Sri Lanka to complete a 3-0 T20 series sweep, returning to number one in the world rankings.

The thread that binds them

Strip away the codes and the countries, and these stories share a single plot: the relentless, unglamorous accumulation of belief. Brighton's "pinch-me moment" against Ajax, Brentford's rise from nowhere, Wakefield's first semi-final, a new stadium in Buffalo, a national broadcast deal bringing motorsport to every living room.

The message for the rest of us is simple. Nobody waits for permission to become something. The 3,000 fans who crossed the Channel didn't ask whether it was worth it. The fan who fought for a stadium for years didn't stop when it got hard. The journeys that look like overnight success almost never are.

This season, the underdogs are winning — and they're inviting the rest of us to believe we might be next.