AN amateur football team has secured a once-in-a-lifetime clash against one of the most successful team in the history of Italian football, Juventus.

Northern League side West Auckland Town, based in County Durham, received confirmation this weekend that the match, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the club’s 1909 World Cup victory over Juventus, will go ahead in Italy this summer.

A team of working-class young men, most of whom were miners, became the first side to lift the World Cup – then known as the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy – and repeated the feat two years later, again defeating Juventus in the final.

Dates and times have yet to be confirmed, but the British Consulate, in Milan, who contacted Italian Premier League club Juventus on West’s behalf earlier this year, say club officials have agreed to a match sometime in August.

Consulate spokesman Steven Anderson said: “It looks like we have managed to get an agreement, in principle, from Juventus to play their second team, which is essentially their under-19s. We are currently trying to fix a date and time for the game and, to this end, we wrote to Juventus again to try to get this finalised.

“We will continue to do all we can to help West Auckland and, hopefully, will get a date fixed as soon as possible.”

West Auckland FC manager Stuart Alderson is already making provisional plans for the clash, and hopes to charter a plane to fly the squad and spectators to and from the match. He expressed the club’s gratitude to the Consulate for its help in arranging the fixture, and added: “This is great news for the club. It has been hard work to get Juventus to agree to the clash, but the Consulate has been very helpful.

“Our next big thing is to get confirmation of the date, and get some help with the expense of the match.”