Declan Rice looks to be the happiest man in England after finally winning a trophy with his childhood club West Ham United. The Englishman has been part of the club since he joined their youth academy as a 15-year-old, having spent his initial youth years at Chelsea.
The 24-year-old has since taken great strides with West Ham, experiencing a lot of ups and downs. He made his senior debut for them as a teenager and became a key member of the squad from a very young age. Rice has featured heavily for them since his breakout in the 2017/18 season and his performances have been so good that he’s now elevated to a regular in the England national team as well.
The Englishman had to really grind hard to keep West Ham in the Premier League in recent years and also take them forward in Europe. His hard work finally paid off when the Irons clinched the 2022/23 UEFA Europa Conference League title with a hard-fought 2-1 win over Fiorentina in the final.
This marked Rice’s first real silverware of his young career and possibly a fitting farewell for the 24-year-old ahead of a most-certain summer transfer to a major club. For the time being, however, Rice is not even thinking about what the future means for him because he absolutely lived every bit of the moment of joy after winning the Conference League title.
The Englishman had a lot of fun with the thousands of West Ham fans at the Fortuna Arena in Prague on Wednesday – dancing on the pitch to their tunes and having the prestige of actually lifting West Ham’s first major European trophy in over 50 years.
He absolutely deserved the honour after playing a major role in the Conference League tournament, having featured in all 11 games and helping his side control games and fight their way to the checkered flag. So one can’t really blame the 24-year-old for absolutely letting go and getting absolutely knackered in the celebrations after winning the European trophy.
Rice did have a lot of fun with the West Ham fans at the Fortuna Arena, but he really transformed into a party monster the day after the win. As the West Ham players broke their initial hangover, they travelled back to London – where the club organized an open-bus parade in the city to celebrate the victory with the fans.
For all the mockery that the Irons often get for being a ‘small club’ with a tiny fanbase as compared to the ‘major’ Premier League sides, they proved that entire thinking wrong with the turnout for the parade. Thousands of West Ham fans flocked the streets of London, walking around with the bus as it travelled around.
Rice clearly loved it and seeing so many fans around only uplifted his party mood. The Englishman posted a video on his Instagram account from the open-bus parade, joining in the fans’ chants of ‘West Ham are massive….everywhere we go’ and showing so many fans surrounding the bus and having the time of their lives.
Declan also decided to have a little bit of fun with the fans and join in on their unique chants, as he took control of the microphone to have a little song with them. The 24-year-old jammed to the famous song ‘Ice Ice Baby’ by Vanilla Ice, even though it was tweaked a little bit to name it ‘Rice Rice Baby’ as an ode to the West Ham captain and his heroics!
But the Hammers’ skipper wasn’t just done with that and clearly inebriated by a little bit of the bubbly, the 24-year-old even dropped the F-Bomb live on the BBC.
As a reporter from the BBC interviewed him during the celebrations, Rice couldn’t contain his excitement towards the massive turnout and said: “I honestly did not expect this many people tonight. But it is West Ham so…WE’RE F****** MASSIVE! Aren’t We?”
This forced the BBC to quickly apologize to their viewers for the foul language, as it is against the channel’s code to broadcast abusive language on their shows. But Declan Rice won’t care one bit about what he’s done, because it only makes him more endearing to the West Ham fans and shows some character which even English football fans can appreciate.
The 24-year-old midfielder seems to be spending these days of celebrations as if they were his last, because that could indeed be the case. He is being heavily linked to a summer move to Arsenal as part of his ambitions to win major trophies and compete in the Champions League.
But if he was to leave the club in the coming weeks, at least Rice ended up having the perfect swansong with the Europa Conference League win and getting to celebrate it with his beloved fans.