Irish interest in the tournament goes on tonight as our #1 Allan Mannus and St.Johnstone are in extra time against Minsk curently
Rocko will be seething as it was another bad night for his golden egg that is the Scottish club coefficient now Motherwell are out, St. Johnstone are in ET tho as stated above and it looks like spotters there
I went into Hapoel Tel Aviv and the wonderfully named CS Pandurii Tarju Jiu earlier. when i saw this draw first i had no idea where these boys were from but so it transpired that they are a very new club and finished second to Steaua Bucharest in te Romanian premier league last year.
they are a similar club to Gyor ETO in Hungary or Ironi Kiryat Shmona in Israel, all clubs are based in small areas but are funded by the government to nurture young players ( steady on twiceasnice97[/USER] and [USER=553]Kid Chocolate) and recieve funding that other clubs would not get.
Anyway, the first leg in Romania was 1-1 and i was pretty confident Hapoel would progress with the away goal, how wrong i was… Hapoel went 1 up after 20 mins thru a Itai Shecter spotter, then the game changed, Padndurii were a classical Eastern Block side in that they were very well organised and brilliant speed on the break, but they had they quality as well that Balkan players seem to naturally have and that is fantastic technique and poise on the ball.
They reminded me very much of the Montenegran international team in their stuctured and well organmised play…
in 15 mins either side of the break they proceded to rip Hapoel assunder playing brilliant football on the break… they had a lad playing right midfield who was Gheorgi Hagi esque and a little fella down the middle who reminded me of Dumitrescu, they won 2-1 in the finish put Hapoel out and any reasonable fan clapped them off the field…great to see a team of local born players do well
Heartbreaking loss for Differdange on penalties having won the second leg over Tromso at home by 1-0.
Still, a good campaign for the Duchy team with the aggregate win over the Eridivisie side being the highlight.
Hard luck lads
I see Udinese are disgracing Italian football again, they are the sole reason for our slide down the coefficient rankings and what else would you expect from a team captained by a bottler.
I really wish we could ban them from representing us in Europe, every season they put in a big late surge and nick a European place off a far more equipped team before making a show of themselves in Euope the following season.
Now blaming a divot after a super run and pass from Muriel put him bearing down on goal, where he managed to miscontrol the ball and it rolled out of play.
the competition enters a very prestigous stage as the group stages for the elite teams who made it through the four qualifying rounds gets underway.
Today is the first day of the seven day Sukkot holiday in Israel, the first day of any jewish holiday as you all know is treated as a Shabbat and it will not lift until 7-16 PM in Tel Aviv when the sun sets and a new day begins.
Ill probably take a trip in to watch Maccabi Tel Aviv and APOEL Nicosia, i fucking despise Maccabi tel Aviv, even more so since i saw a " friends of Ulster" flag on TV at one of their games last year, however they are a seriosuly good team and as i said earlier were beaten 4-3 at home by Basle in the champions league qualifer, that form was franked last night in West London.
I was reading up on APOEL earlier and i see Killian Sheridan is now with them, ill keep an eye on him tonight.
elsewhere Maccabi Haifa are at home to Alkmaar, id expect Haifa to take that.
A team i am watching are Pandurii from Romania , i saw them here beat Hapoel TA in the second qualifying round and told the forum i was impressed, they then went on and dumped out Braga, winning in Portugal. they’re at home to Dnipro tonight
Swansea lead one nil away to Valencia. The home side had Adil Rami sent off after 10 minutes. Watched the 15 minutes or so before h/t and Valencia were terrible, devoid of confidence and ideas. Wouldn’t be surprised if Swansea scored another couple second half
I was in a pub on Sunday night having some food with the missus and had half an eye on Betis putting 3 past Valencia by half time. They looked an absolute rabble of a team.
anyway, i made my win in to Maccabi TA and APOEL tonight with the nephew, around 20 euro in for me, he was a fiver , warm evening in Tel Aviv and it was still 28 C at KO.
game finished up scoreless, Maccabi were awarded a penatly in injury time but the APOEL keeper made a very decent save from Barak Yitzaki’s well struck kick,
Maccabi will be disappointed with this, they dominated from the off really and the lack of signing a decent goalscorer since they sold Eliran Atar to Rennes is costing them, Rade Prica led the line up front with Eran Zehavi who has come back from Palermo but unfortunatly they looked somewhat blunt, their 2 arab players and arguably best on the night Maharan Radi and Yoanes Dabbour created plenty in the middle but the cutting edge wasnt there.
APOEL didnt look much to me, their starting 11 contained only 2 cypriots , the rest was an assortment of Portugeese and Brazilian players no doubt bought in by the Portuguese manager, Paolo Sergio.
Their talisman remains Constantinos Charalambides who did damage against ireland in nicosia under Stan in 2006, however as a team they lack any real pace and are a shadow of the side that got to the quarter finals of the champions league a few years back.
Cillian Sheridan came on with about ten to go, he did pretty much as expected, fell over, gave the ball away twice and fouled a fella, dunno what he is doing there really, he does seem to be getting around the lesser leagues in Europe as he was in Bulgaria there a while back.
I like Europa league night, there is a TV station here that shows one feature game (tonight it was Apollon Limassoll vs Trabzonspor) but anytime there is a goal, penalty ,etc in another match they’ll flick over, enjoyable way to spend an evening, the Trabzonspor game seemed a right laugh, they went 2-1 with 5 to go and their players did their best to incite the local Greek Cypriots by running to the crowd, cops had to sort it out,
[quote=“mickee321, post: 834405, member: 367”]anyway, i made my win in to Maccabi TA and APOEL tonight with the nephew, around 20 euro in for me, he was a fiver , warm evening in Tel Aviv and it was still 28 C at KO.
game finished up scoreless, Maccabi were awarded a penatly in injury time but the APOEL keeper made a very decent save from Barak Yitzaki’s well struck kick,
Maccabi will be disappointed with this, they dominated from the off really and the lack of signing a decent goalscorer since they sold Eliran Atar to Rennes is costing them, Rade Prica led the line up front with Eran Zehavi who has come back from Palermo but unfortunatly they looked somewhat blunt, their 2 arab players and arguably best on the night Maharan Radi and Yoanes Dabbour created plenty in the middle but the cutting edge wasnt there.
APOEL didnt look much to me, their starting 11 contained only 2 cypriots , the rest was an assortment of Portugeese and Brazilian players no doubt bought in by the Portuguese manager, Paolo Sergio.
Their talisman remains Constantinos Charalambides who did damage against ireland in nicosia under Stan in 2006, however as a team they lack any real pace and are a shadow of the side that got to the quarter finals of the champions league a few years back.
Cillian Sheridan came on with about ten to go, he did pretty much as expected, fell over, gave the ball away twice and fouled a fella, dunno what he is doing there really, he does seem to be getting around the lesser leagues in Europe as he was in Bulgaria there a while back.
I like Europa league night, there is a TV station here that shows one feature game (tonight it was Apollon Limassoll vs Trabzonspor) but anytime there is a goal, penalty ,etc in another match they’ll flick over, enjoyable way to spend an evening, the Trabzonspor game seemed a right laugh, they went 2-1 with 5 to go and their players did their best to incite the local Greek Cypriots by running to the crowd, cops had to sort it out,[/quote
ah yeah, same reasons as myself really
look, he is an atrocious player, an absolute donkey, but fuck it if his agent can con clubs into giving him one year deals then fair fucks, its a hell of a lot better than living in Dundee or some place
