Carling Cup Final: Slumdog in With the Millionaires at Wembley

I watched the master-class film "Slumdog Millionaire" last night, as I couldn't sleep before the showpiece event the next day.

How on earth could a...a...a Slumdog...possibly win Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Almost the same question had been asked to me for the past week.

How on earth could a Gillingham fan, a Slumdog Gillingham fan, possibly get tickets to watch Manchester United play Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup Final at Wembley?

In with the nearly 89,000 millionaires in one of the world's finest stadiums, I really did feel like a Slumdog sitting next to people so rich in watching pure quality week after week in arguably the world's greatest football league.

I am a Gillingham season ticket holder, and I get to see "real football"; pure, honest lower league football.

My companion is a Tottenham season ticket holder, he gets to see extravagant football; exciting, pulsating, jaw-dropping Premier League football.

I found out the fellow season ticket holder sitting the other side of me, this clean-cut fully suited elegant business-looking man, was actually an FC Barcelona season ticket holder, who thought he'd come to London to see what "real" British football has to offer.

League Two sandwiched in between the Premier League and La Liga. Despite having a £60 ticket for today's game, clearly I was not a Slumdog Millionaire, just the Slumdog in with the millionaires.

Only 24 hours before sitting in front of a worldwide audience, I was at the relatively unknown KRBS Priestfield stadium, watching my Gillingham team scrape past AFC Bournemouth in front of a whopping 5,353 four levels down the English football hierarchy.

Fast forward a day and I'm at the place where the 2011 UEFA Champions League Final will be held, the home of English football: the new Wembley. And there in North London sits 88,216 millionaires, and a Slumdog awaiting to be dazzled.

I look at my programme and the squad lists of both sides and dream of seeing even just one of them week in week out. How I'd love to have Heurelho Gomes in goal for the Gills.

As this showpiece event, the exciting, highly-anticipated, most least prestigious trophy of top-flight football with a name changed regularly by a sponsor begins, I sit back in awe and wonder and watch hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent strut their stuff in front of the world.

In the opening stages, a young striker has a chance before another youngster, this one a Republic of Ireland international, hits a shot I can only dream of that goes just narrowly wide of the mark.

Then the winger in white, a £1m man who has played at the highest international level, terrorises the French international red left-back, whose £5.5m worth of talent cannot stop him getting destroyed.

This winger in white, called Aaron Lennon, is definitely a player Mark Stimson should bring to Priestfield, if at all possible...

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?