Karl Robinson said he wants Salford City to be “the biggest small club in the world” after they beat Grimsby 4-3 on aggregate to reach the League Two play-off final.
Kallum Cesay scored a dramatic extra-time winner as the Ammies withstood a Grimsby fightback to ensure they will face Notts County on 25 May at Wembley.
Leading 2-1 from the first leg in Cleethorpes, Salford threatened to cruise into the final when striker Daneil Udoh fired home from a corner eight minutes after half-time.
But Kieran Green and substitute Jaze Kabia scored in five minutes to force extra time.
With the tie heading to penalties, Cesay latched onto the end of a wayward pass back and fired home a 117th-minute winner to spark wild celebrations.
After the match, an emotional Robinson called the upcoming Wembley showdown with Notts County “the biggest occasion in the club’s history” as Salford moved one win away from promotion.
“We are a generational club,” he said. “We have got to make these kids adore Salford and hopefully, when they get old enough, they will make their kids adore Salford.
“Then, in 15 or 20 years, this will be a club with multiple generations and parts of the family coming to watch the team.
“My grandad took me to watch Liverpool and then I took my daughter to watch them everywhere.
“That’s how these clubs stand the test of time. We are only 86 years old and are trying to compete in the North West, the hotbed of football around the world.
“There aren’t many better teams anywhere in the world than in the Greater Manchester area, or in the North West area and we are trying to compete with them, little old Salford.”
The win over Grimsby ranked as the biggest achievement in Robinson’s two-and-a-half-year tenure. Salford were eight games without a win and 21st in League Two when he took over in January 2024.
He successfully guided the Ammies to survival during his first campaign in charge, before narrowly missing out on the play-offs at the end of his second season. Salford’s upward trend continued this term as they finished fourth in League Two and, now, are one win away from promotion.
While Robinson deserves heaps of credit for steering the club away from relegation to compete at the top end of the table, he noted how important his predecessors were in laying the foundation for his success.
“When Graham [Alexander] got the club from the National League into the English Football League it was monumental. Because that’s the hardest promotion to get and we’re in the footsteps of that,” he said.
“There have been so many managers who have come here over the past five or six years and every single person has played their part in that.”
No goal scored at the Peninsula Stadium will be more poignant than Cesay’s last-gasp winner, which came days after a funeral held for his father Tony, a former English National Boxing Champion who passed away at the age of 58 following a battle with Motor Neurone disease.
“If we could have picked the player, it would have been Kallum Cesay,” said Robinson, explaining he had attended the funeral representing the club.
“It brought me to tears. His dad was a credit to the boxing world is someone who’s an icon in East London, and when you speak about the names of people who were there, you see the respect that he carries in his world.
“His son is in his own world now, making a name for himself.”
Salford City will face Notts County at Wembley Stadium on Monday, 25 May, 3pm kick-off.
