Sheffield United midfielder Tommy Doyle dreams of imitating his famous grandfathers by playing at Wembley.
Doyle helped Blades beat Tottenham 1-0 FA Cup Wednesday night’s fifth round is a result that keeps them one win away from the semi-final at the national stadium.
This Manchester City On loan, he watched video footage of his paternal grandfather Mike Doyle and maternal grandfather Glyn Pardoe, who played for Wembley for City in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Mike Doyle, who is third on City’s all-time list with 570, and Pardoe, 15, the club’s youngest ever player, played together in the 1969 FA Cup final and 1970 League Cup final – both of which scored in a game they played.
The 21-year-old looks forward to following in their footsteps in a quarter-final home run against Blackburn.
“You dream it. Everyone says it, but when you grow up you do it,” he said. “You watch a game at Wembley and I enjoyed seeing my grandfather play at Wembley, which for me further encourages me to do it myself.
“More than anything else, it’s huge and exciting. It’s a football game and we’re winning it and we’re going to Wembley, so it’s really exciting.”
Tommy Doyle’s grandfather, Glyn Pardoe, played Wembley for Man City.
(PA)
The Blades’ third FA Cup quarterfinals in four years wraps up the Champion promotion move where boss Paul Heckingbottom’s priorities lie.
He made eight changes for the victory over the unfortunate Spurs, but Doyle still expected his side to win.
“It’s huge and I think it will give us a push in the league as well,” he said. “We competed with the best team and for me I thought we were a better team.
“Obviously, as you can imagine, everyone is very happy in the locker room. I think we can enjoy it and then we should focus on the weekend. It’s another big game, so you can’t think too much about it.
“We wanted to win the game, we prepared to win and I expected us to win. That’s my confidence in the guys and I think we performed really well.
“We felt comfortable, we were aggressive off the ball and we played great passes on the ball, we were calm and calm. It felt great outside.”
It was a familiar story for Tottenham, who lost to second-tier opposition for the second season in a row as they saw a realistic chance to end their 15-year cup drought.
They have an important period ahead of them in the Premier League and the Champions League, and assistant coach Cristian Stellini is filling in for Antonio Conte in his absence and waiting for a reaction.
“The last two or three performances have been really intense, but I hope it will be easy to explain to the players what we have to do when you put on this kind of performance,” he said.
“Normally our team will react after a game like this. This is not the first time and we need to react immediately. We have an important game on Saturday, another one on Wednesday and we continue.”