Huddersfield Town’s manager, David Wagner, called his players legends after they defeated Reading in a penalty shootout to gain promotion to the Premier League. The teams were deadlocked at 0-0 after a tense Championship play-off final before Christopher Schindler scored the decisive spot-kick for the club, who were last in England’s top flight in 1972.

That secured an extraordinary rise for a club with one of the lowest budgets in this season’s Championship who had finished 19th last season. “I said to the players before the [play-off] semi-finals: ‘You are heroes, you finished fifth in the league, but from hero to zero in football is sometimes only a week and now you have the opportunity to become legends.’ Now they are legends for sure. Everybody will remember what this group of players have done with a small budget. And they deserve it. This football club has written an unbelievable story.”

Huddersfield reach Premier League after penalty shoot-out win over Reading Read more

The manager revealed that he had not chosen before kick-off who would take the penalties in the event of a shootout and was taken aback when Schindler stepped up. The centre-back had not volunteered during Huddersfield’s victory against Sheffield Wednesday in the semi-final, which also came via a shootout.

“I said to the players [after extra-time]: ‘The easiest thing in football is to put the ball from 12 yards into the net. Now after 10 months you have the opportunity to go to the Premier League and all you have to do is put the ball in the net from 12 yards. Take this easy challenge and do it. Everybody who wants to do so raise their hands.’ They said: ‘OK, give me this opportunity.’ But I was pretty surprised when Schindi said: ‘I’d like to take the fifth one.’ He was totally confident so I said OK.”

Promotion has the potential to transform the Yorkshire club whose budget this season was “much less than [the reported] £12m”, according to Wagner. Promotion to the Premier League is worth at least £170m. “I need to take a few weeks to get my head around it,” Wagner said. “I will have a lot of phone calls to make.”

Wagner’s feat this season is sure to arouse interest from more wealthy clubs who may wish to tempt him away from Huddersfield. The German had no wish to think about that straight after this historic triumph. “I haven’t thought about my personal standing or [that of] individual players,” he said. “All that’s in my head is celebration. My only focus was this final, so I was not involved in planning [celebrations] but there are a lot of smart, intelligent and very happy people in Huddersfield who have been thinking about that – and after 45 years it is sure to be one of the better celebrations.”

The man who hired Wagner in November 2015, Huddersfield’s chairman, Dean Hoyle, is sure to relish those celebrations. “I’m so emotional,” he said after the final whistle at Wembley. “I’ve been supporting this club since 1969. To be a Premier League team now is a dream come true. It’s huge what it means for Huddersfield, we’re on the big stage. It proves you don’t have to blow your brains to get promoted. We’ve done it the right way.”

Hoyle, like Wagner, spared a thought for the beaten opponents. “Reading have lost on penalties and that’s really cruel. The prize is so big and I feel for them.”

Reading’s manager, Jaap Stam, said his players must use the pain of defeat to drive them towards happier times. “It’s difficult to take but it needs to be difficult,” he said. “You can’t say: ‘Tomorrow I’m going to go out and eat some Chinese with my girlfriend.’ You need to feel that experience and learn from it if you want to get there again.”

Asked about the possibility of him being lured away from Reading on the back of this season’s exploits, Stam said: “I still have a contract at Reading and there is nothing there that’s going to take me away. Of course you want to work at the highest level. I played there myself but it doesn’t mean [because] of what we achieved this season I need to go away. I just need to see what happens in the summer.”