It is 13 years since Bournemouth, a couple of months after finishing runners-up to Doncaster in the third tier, hosted Real Madrid. It was a balmy summer’s day, officially Carlo Ancelotti’s first match in charge, and, a few hours after checking into the Haven hotel on the Sandbanks peninsula, a wave of galácticos took to the pitch: Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Kaká, Karim Benzema, the list goes on.

An early, wayward Ronaldo free-kick broke the wrist of an 11-year‑old boy before Madrid ran out 6-0 winners in a bucket-list friendly.

“I retired a month earlier, and I thought: ‘Yeah, that’s typical, isn’t it?’” says Steve Fletcher, a bona fide Bournemouth legend and now club ambassador who scored 121 goals across 728 appearances, a smile unravelling on his face. “You play for a club for 20 years, and then you go and get the biggest team in the world to come down. I wanted to say to Eddie Howe: ‘Can I have five minutes on the pitch?’ For them to play here was utterly ridiculous.”

It was one of the stranger days in Bournemouth’s recent history and on Thursday they will take another step when they face Real Sociedad in their first competitive game against European opposition. On the final day of last season, Bournemouth’s staff and players celebrated qualifying for the Europa League by gathering around a “Rayanair” flag depicting their Brazil forward piloting a plane, giddy supporters providing the perfect backdrop for the pictures, and those fans have since booked trips to Prague, Oslo and Vigo.

Perhaps it was fate that Andoni Iraola, who grew up in the Basque Country, would guide Bournemouth to San Sebastián. “It is going to be a momentous occasion, an I-was-there moment,” Fletcher says. He has exchanged messages this week with Iraola, who sent best wishes, including for a win.

The scale of the achievement is not lost on Fletcher. Iraola, who will return to Bournemouth with Liverpool on Sunday – with his assistants Tommy Elphick and Shaun Cooper, both of whom also played for the club in the third tier – was the mastermind. “I always say to people around Bournemouth: ‘Don’t ever take this for granted,’” Fletcher says.

“It is for every supporter who has ever followed Bournemouth: past, present, for the people who passed away, grandparents, great‑grandparents. I think everyone will feel very emotional on Thursday.”

La Real are playing in Europe for the sixth time in seven seasons but for Bournemouth, coached by Marco Rose, this is new ground. It was not unplanned, though. At the end of 2023, when Bournemouth were 14th in the Premier League, their bullish American billionaire owner, Bill Foley, predicted they would play in Europe within five years. Foley’s motto “Always Advance, Never Retreat” adorns a wall in the boardroom.

“He created the Golden Knights, the ice hockey team in Las Vegas, and they won the Stanley Cup within six seasons,” Fletcher says. “He has obviously got a crystal ball, he can see things and believes in people … I always think there should be a movie made about this time at AFC Bournemouth.”

Fletcher was influential in Bournemouth making it this far. His winning goal at home against Grimsby on the penultimate day of the 2008-09 season ensured Bournemouth would not fall into non-league, the club having begun the season on -17 points after failing to exit administration. He subsequently worked in the recruitment department, as first‑team coach to Howe, Gary O’Neil and Scott Parker and then as a player liaison officer. “I’ve still got kit man and groundsman to go,” he says, laughing.

Adam Smith, the 35-year-old Bournemouth captain into his 15th season at the club, including a loan in League One in 2010-11, remembers the days of training at Canford school, round the corner from the state-of-the-art facility they moved into 18 months ago. Did Europe feel plausible when he signed from Tottenham as a teenager? “I would never have believed you; I’d just think it’s bonkers,” Smith says.

Fletcher references Neil Vacher, the former club secretary and current club historian who grew up as a supporter in the 1960s. “Would he have dreamed that we could even be in the top flight, never mind playing in Europe?”

Bournemouth have been in the top flight for all but two seasons since their promotion in 2015, but Europe hits differently. Most of the squad watched the August draw in the canteen and until this season David Brooks was used to midweek European matches meaning a night on the sofa.

He watched his Wales teammate Brennan Johnson lift the Europa League and Conference League in successive seasons with Tottenham and Crystal Palace respectively, and another, Neco Williams, excel in the Europa League for Nottingham Forest.

“I was delighted for them, but for selfish reasons you want to be involved in teams like that, competing in Europe,” he says. “Everyone’s raring to go and wanting to showcase their talents, and hopefully we can go far. We always cause the big teams in the Premier League problems and I don’t think it should be any different in Europe. The club’s journey has been well documented and to finish it off with a European trophy would be really nice.”

The Madrid game coincided with Bournemouth opening a stand named after Ted MacDougall, another much-loved striker. At the time the pressure was on to ensure the stadium was ready for the landmark fixture, and if that sounds familiar then that is because this summer Bournemouth had to upgrade their ground to meet Uefa regulations. Their first home game is against Sturm Graz next month; the week after, Milan – whose red-and-black stripes inspired Bournemouth’s kit at the start of the 70s – come to town. “Just to mutter the words Milan, AC Milan, in the same sentence as AFC Bournemouth, in a competitive fixture, is crazy,” Fletcher says. “I think of Maldini, Baresi, Van Basten, Gullit.”

The stand at the other end of the ground has been named after Fletcher since 2010. Viktoria Plzen and Hapoel Be’er Sheva will visit in December and January. “A lot of people might come to Bournemouth and go: ‘Who is Steve Fletcher?’ Because I’m not one of the great footballers, but I’m very proud of the career I had,” the 54-year-old says.

“I’ve had Premier League managers before games, an hour and a half before kick-off, look over and say: ‘That’s your stand, very well done.’ People like José Mourinho and Pep Guardiola said that and when I walked away I got straight on the phone to my parents and said: ‘You won’t believe what’s just happened.’”

There will probably be a pervading sense of disbelief among the Bournemouth supporters in San Sebastián and those tuning in from home on Thursday. “There will probably be people coming to our European games in their 80s and 90s who will have watched the club from year dot,” Fletcher says. “For us to be mixing it with some of the giants of European football is magical.

“It’s beyond anybody’s wildest dreams, and we still have to pinch ourselves. But at the same time, we have to enjoy it, embrace it. I hope there’s many more happy times to come. To think we’re playing someone like Milan in a competitive game is incredible. Wouldn’t it be amazing if in the next few years we could play Real Madrid?”