Category: UEFA Europa League

• Hoops beaten again after chastening loss to Rangers

• Juventus hammer NEC, Besiktas pile woe on Marseille

Celtic suffered another European embarrassment as the Scottish champions were beaten 3-1 at home by Ferencvaros in the Europa League. Just weeks on from crashing out of the Champions League qualifiers to Austrian side Lask, despite at one point holding a four-goal lead, Celtic’s defensive flaws were exposed once more.

Martin O’Neill’s team also suffered a chastening 3-0 defeat to rivals Rangers last weekend and failed to deliver on their manager’s promise to respond. Bamidele Yusuf opened the scoring for the visitors before Mika Baur equalised late in the first half. However Kristoffer Zachariassen quickly put Ferencvaros back in front before Daniel Arzani’s sensational strike, on his return to Celtic Park, capped a fine night for Ferencvaros.

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A good night for Bournemouth and Palace but a miserable one for Celtic

TNT’s Connie McLaughlin asks Celtic boss Martin O’Neill to “talk to us about the thinking behind” replacing goalkeeper Sam Johnstone with Viljami Sinisalo … and receives an unnecessarily abrupt and cranky response. “No I’ll not talk to you about the thinking behind that … he was always going to play … believe it or not, Connie, my job is not actually to explain every single situation to you … do you know what I’ll do? … I’ll tell the fans … through my Celtic TV.”

Would he like to talk about the other three changes? “No, absolutely not … I don’t want to be ruinous here of this situation … start again, and tell me all about it … give me the rest of the changes … [McLaughlin tells him] … I’m delighted you’re taking about James Forrest … he’s been a fantastic player … getting on a little bit … he’s been a fantastic impact sub … let’s see what he can do … can he last the game? … I doubt it very much … thank you.”

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It was worth the wait for Crystal Palace. After being denied their rightful place in the Europa League last season, Pierre Sage’s side made the perfect debut by brushing aside Lech Poznan with a victory that will take some of the heat off their new manager.

The Frenchman has big shoes to fill in replacing Oliver Glasner after his predecessor won three trophies in 12 months and there had been some talk of disquiet behind the scenes following his decision to drop the teenager Jaydee Canvot at the weekend. But while Palace face a testing trip to face in-form Leeds on Sunday having conceded 11 goals from their opening four Premier League matches, they were given a big helping hand by their opponents here well before Radoslaw Murawski was sent off late on for a reckless foul on Canvot.

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Club legend Steve Fletcher reflects on the wild rise over two decades to playing Real Sociedad in the Europa League

It is 13 years since Bournemouth, a couple of months after finishing runners-up to Doncaster in the third tier, hosted Real Madrid. It was a balmy summer’s day, officially Carlo Ancelotti’s first match in charge, and, a few hours after checking into the Haven hotel on the Sandbanks peninsula, a wave of galácticos took to the pitch: Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric, Kaká, Karim Benzema, the list goes on.

An early, wayward Ronaldo free-kick broke the wrist of an 11-year‑old boy before Madrid ran out 6-0 winners in a bucket-list friendly.

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Captain looking forward to intimidating atmosphere when Wearsiders host AZ, after 53 years away

When Sunderland last played European football, club directors viewed it as a useful means of raising the cash necessary to fund floodlight upgrades at Roker Park necessitated by England’s widespread adoption of colour television.

Back in the autumn of 1973 a lighting system compatible with the demands of broadcasting in black and white was proving increasingly outdated and Sunderland responded by doubling admission prices for the second leg of their opening European Cup Winners’ Cup tie against Vasas of Budapest. Coming at a moment when miners and railway workers were engaged in long-running industrial action and north-easterners’ finances were duly tight, it dictated that a disappointing crowd of under 23,000 turned out to watch Dennis Tueart’s penalty secure a 3-0 aggregate win.

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• 10-man Rangers hang on for 1-0 win against Jablonec

• Tromsø 0-0 Brighton; Hearts 2-2 Rapid Vienna

Ryan Naderi’s second-half strike gave an unconvincing Rangers a narrow 1-0 win in the first leg of their Conference League playoff tie against Czech side Jablonec at Ibrox. Derek McInnes got his first win as Rangers manager at the fifth time of asking with a 5-1 thumping of St Mirren on Sunday but there was regression in the goalless first half which brought boos at the interval whistle.

The Govan side pepped up after the break and Naderi opened the scoring from close range in the 50th minute but in the 78th minute the substitute Cammy Devlin was sent off – minutes after coming off the bench – for a high tackle on Jiri Slama to leave Rangers to see out the game with 10 men.

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• Rangers 1-1 Jagiellonia Bialystok (2-3 agg)

• Spirited Hearts hold Benfica but also out of competition

Derek McInnes’s fledgling tenure as Rangers manager is in disarray after his side exited the Europa League qualifiers with a 3-2 aggregate defeat to Jagiellonia Bialystok after drawing 1-1 at Ibrox.

Rangers had lost 2-1 in the first leg in Poland last week but there was optimism when the captain, Lawrence Shankland, levelled the tie on aggregate with a penalty on 19 minutes.

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With the Arsenal Fun Boat having finally docked at its destination on Tuesday after a 22-year voyage, attention on Wednesday turned to Aston Villa’s Crazy Train as its passengers alighted in Istanbul. Having passed away last summer, Ozzy Osbourne, whose famous anthem serves as Villa’s walk-on music, was not present to see his team lift Bigger Vase but the ease with which they strolled to victory would certainly have met with his approval. In spanking three goals without reply past Freiberg, Unai Emery’s side ended a trophy drought that stretched back 30 years and for their Spanish manager it marked a fifth success in the competition with three different teams. It is a state of affairs rendered all the more remarkable by the weird quirk that each of them has ‘villa’ in their names.

Regarding songs to play during VAR decisions (Football Daily letters passim) how about Rise by Public Image Ltd, featuring the oft repeated line: ‘I could be wrong I could be right’?” – Adrian Bradshaw.

Why stop with VAR music to fill dead spots in games? Imagine, the next time a player goes down, hearing that memorable opening line from Johnny Cash, “I hear the trainer coming!” What? Oh” – John Nielsen-Gammon.

A doff of the cap to the great Unai Emery, who won the Uefa Emery League yet again last night but also achieved a rare, unprecedented double this season as he also got promotion to Primera Federación, the third tier of Spanish football, in April with Real Union, which he has been the owner of since 2021 (his father and grandfather used to play for them)” – Noble Francis

Re Steve McClaren and his new role at Rotherham (Football Daily passim, full email edition), do you think he thought it was Rotterdam and he got confused by the accent?” – Dan J Levy.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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Unai Emery has reconfirmed his status as master of the competition, but will now want to set his sights higher

There are two ways to win a final. You can win it by the odd goal, amid a frenzy of anxiety so the final whistle comes as a relief. Or you can win it as a procession, flexing your superiority, so the final whistle is almost resented for spoiling the fun. For Aston Villa, this was very much the latter. If their fans had dreamed the previous night of how they might win the game, they could barely have come up with something so satisfying and emphatic.

It’s true that Villa have a budget around 2.8 times that of Freiburg, and that they have been strong favourites in almost every game in the Europa League this season. But then in the Premier League they’re often fighting against sides with far greater resources. The poles of European and domestic football may have flipped, but that is not their fault nor, at least for now, their concern. They have not been a successful enough club – at least in the past 100 years – to decline to fully celebrate any trophy that comes their way. A second European success, 44 years after the first, is history.

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Youri Tielemans, Emi Buendía and Morgan Rogers were all on target in Istanbul as Unai Emery’s side outclassed their opponents

Villa have form for goalkeeper woes in European finals. Jimmy Rimmer went into the 1982 European Cup final with a sore neck, having taken a whack in training a couple of days before the match. He lasted nine minutes before giving way to 23-year-old substitute goalie Nigel Spink, who went on to have the match of his life. So all won’t be lost should the worst happen to Martinez …

… though our man on the spot, Ben Fisher, has just reported that “the glove is now back on and he’s practising claiming crosses from coaches and the other goalkeepers.” So panic over, for now at least.

Emi Martinez may have an issue here: Villa’s goalkeeping coach, Javi Garcia, has just spent the past couple of minutes taping one of Martinez’s fingers and now the Argentinian World Cup winner is continuing to warm up with his right goalie glove in his left hand. He looks very mobile, but it doesn’t seem ideal.

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• England defender thanks Prince of Wales for his support

• William expected to be in Istanbul for Europa League final

Ezri Konsa has said the Prince of Wales referring to him as a “Rolls-Royce” counts as the greatest compliment of his career and that Aston Villa are grateful for his royal backing. Prince William, arguably Villa’s best-known supporter and a patron of the Football Association, is expected to be in Istanbul for Wednesday’s Europa League final. Villa are seeking their first trophy since the League Cup in 1996 and will face the German side Freiburg in Turkey.

Konsa has opened up on the surreal nature of support from the heir to the throne. William was in the Villa Park directors’ box for Villa’s second-leg 4-0 victory over Nottingham Forest, which cemented Villa’s place in a first major European final since 1982.

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Aston Villa and Crystal Palace’s runs to European finals are historic achievements, but symptomatic of a worrying trend

There will be no doubting Unai Emery’s supremacy in the Europa League if he is reacquainted with the trophy in Istanbul this month. A fifth title would add to the Aston Villa manager’s legend and it would show he can do it with an English club. The latter achievement, though, may be diminished in value. A greater concern lies in the way that Premier League clubs, gradually but discernibly, are dominating Europe’s smaller competitions in a way Uefa surely could never have intended.

Villa will be the eighth English finalists from the last 22 teams to reach the Europa League’s showpiece. Should they win, it would be the first time since the first two years of the Uefa Cup, its predecessor with the same trophy, that sides from England have won the secondary tournament in consecutive seasons. They would build on Tottenham’s haphazard triumph of last May and while neither consistency nor relative excellence should be sniffed at their progress contributes to a concerning broader trend.

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John McGinn’s two goals confirmed Villa’s comeback win as they overpowered Forest to reach the final in Istanbul

We’re still in the dark over where Lindelof will play. Unai Emery was curt with TNT: “McGinn, he is important like every player, he is the captian, his connection with the supporters is massive.We must get out best collectively and best individually, John McGinn is very important in this message.”

More Pereira: “Enjoy the game, compete first minute to last minute, be brave, to try to force our game and in the end we will see.He [Gibbs-White] is here to help us, we will see what happens in the game. They need to be ready, this is a moment of the season we need to help the team, I have confidence in everyone, we can change the players but we keep the spirit.In our mind we come here to compete to win the game.”

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A fourth manager of the season seemed a wild strategy but Portuguese coach has galvanised the squad and this journey could end in the Champions League

Football, it transpires, is not rocket science. If it were, Nottingham Forest would not be close to securing Premier League survival and two games from Champions League football next season. The club’s approach could hardly be described as methodical but whether by accident or design, Vítor Pereira, Forest’s fourth head coach in six months, has found the right formula.

When eight changes to the lineup were announced for Monday’s visit to Chelsea, eyebrows were raised as the second string were sent out. It allowed Pereira to rest others for Thursday’s Europa League semi-final second leg at Aston Villa. Within two minutes they were ahead and by the hour they were out of sight and a further step towards salvation thanks to a third away win in a row.

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Chris Wood’s second-half penalty gave Forest a narrow to lead to take into next week’s second leg at Villa Park

Villa, on the other hand, are more likely to build through the middle. They’ll condense the play and look for quick interchanges, Ollie Watkins attacking the space in behind – especially in the absence of Murillo – with Emi Buendia in particular but also John McGinn looking to feed him in.

And as Gibbs-White does for Forest, so Rogers will do for them, mooching about dropping grenades, while Youri Tielemans will look to conduct from deep and arrive on the edge of the box to hit shots.

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