2-0 defeat in Europa League opener

With this year’s participation in the UEFA Europa League being the fourth group stage appearance in a row, the F.C. Copenhagen players have of course in recent years gained a considerable amount of experience playing at an international level, but unfortunately in Thursday’s away loss to Cluj of Romania injury and sickness had left four of the most experienced in those terms - Christiansen, Grønkjær, Nørregaard and Laursen - out of the starting line-up.
 

By Lars Kristensen

Both teams produced a number of chances throughout the opening forty-five minutes and things might have gone very different if, among other things, Ailton had not been added to the injury list early in the game. However, after Cluj got their first after fifty-three minutes, F.C. Copenhagen lacked the impetus needed to get back in the game and left it to the Romanians to lock the game down.

William Kvist

- They were indeed a good team with many excellent players; still, we ought to have finished a lot better on the chances we got. Actually, the first 45 minutes went quite well with Santin coming close a number of times, and it really is too bad that they then scored on such a stupid free kick because at that point we were otherwise holding them off very adequately.

Thomas Kristensen

- It is an uphill battle at the moment and we are far away from the fine play of last season. We are simply forced to work much harder to get the goals we need while at the same time the opposite seems to be quite the case for our opponents. The first half was fine, of course, but after their first goal they settle down which in turn does a lot to improve their passing game and from then on they are in fact in complete control of things. We searched for ways to challenge them but we still lack those last, few percentages at the moment and therefore we came up short tonight.

Martin Vingaard

- We knew what we had to do and defensively, we followed the game plan well, but, to win you need audacity and capability and we rarely managed to keep the ball long enough to actually try and do something with it. We lost the ball way too soon much too often, and generally our first touches were not good enough for European football, and also, next time, we need to get more out of our counter-attacks. However, as I said, I do still think we covered the field quite well; in the end their finishing was just a slightly better than ours but hopefully we will have changed that when we meet again in the return game.

Next in the Europa League, however, is Sparta Prague. Thus, F.C. Copenhagen will play host to the Czech runners-up of last season on Thursday 1 Oct at 19:00 CET at the PARKEN Stadium. Three weeks later they travel to Holland to meet the last team in the group, PSV Eindhoven, and then the reverse legs follow in November and December.

Game stats:

CFR 1907 Cluj – F.C. Copenhagen 2-0 (0-0)

1-0 Culio (53)

2-0 Traoré (75)