Aston Villa's nine-month pursuit of the same goal down two paths may be all but complete a week from now.
Even after a pallid showing at Fulham, one more Premier League win will most likely be enough to hit the Champions League target, with two eminently winnable games up next. They remain favourites at a skinny price to win the Europa League, a prize with a Champions League place as a bonus.
But it is the apparent secondary target that fires the imagination, for all the cash rewards of a top-five finish. For the third spring running, Villa enter a knockout semi-final in which they are widely assumed to be the stronger side, with an enormous weight of expectation from supporters who have only seen a Villa captain lift a major trophy on video. This is now true of any fan still on the right side of 30, which, in one of the youngest cities in Europe, must be a lot of people.
"The semi-final against Olympiacos two years ago, we lost," said Unai Emery on Wednesday. "But we were involved in the Premier League to finish fourth and we finished the season a little bit more tired and with some important injuries. We accepted it and, of course, it was a process we had in that moment.
"Last year, we played in the semi-final of the FA Cup - we lost, and didn't deserve more against Crystal Palace. It was another experience. We are going to try to use our experiences to try to get better in this one."
More than anyone else, Emery has stressed that the Premier League is the club's unassailable top priority. The reasons are clear enough. A trophy brings a huge sugar-high, but a scrapbook of memories is all that lasts. Champions League qualification is the means to secure the financial elbow-room necessary to achieve their future ambitions.
Fine. We all recognise the supremacy of the numbers now. But Thursday, and Villa Park next week, will remind us that the game is still about more than that.
Emery himself, so clearly a man with a deep footballing soul, loves the game passionately enough to know why. Villa are playing for their right, and that of their Gen-Z fans, to tell stories to their future descendants, as the generations before them speak of Rotterdam and Ron Saunders.
They will not tell tales of how they finished fifth, but famous nights and thrilling moments: Jhon Duran against Bayern Munich, Emi Buendia against Arsenal - and, they hope, legends of Istanbul.
The only road back to there runs through Nottingham.
Listen to full commentary of Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa at 20:00 BST on Thursday on BBC Radio WM (95.6FM/DAB/Freeview 714)
And tune into The West Midlands Football Phone-In from 18:00 on weeknights