Closing in on the top spot
By Jan Eliassen
The season is now 9 matches old, and soon one third of the season will have been played. F.C. Copenhagen is still climbing toward the top, and are now in second place, just two points behind the league leaders FC Midtjylland. Since our last recap here at FCCopenhagen.com, the Danish Champions from F.C. Copenhagen has played one draw and won two matches.
OB – F.C. Copenhagen 0 – 0
25 August 2007
One of the expected top clubs this season is OB, and in the 7th round of the SAS League F.C. Copenhagen travelled to Odense to play OB. The match was a hard fought battle between two very powerful and strong sides, and had very few chances to any of the two clubs.
For only the second time this season Ailton Almeida was among the starting 11, but quite as expected the OB defence showed to be a tough match, and Ailton and Grønkjær ended up having a very hard day at the office, creating very little and only being allowed few attempts at goal.
In the beginning of the first half, it was OB in command as they also had the first chance, but Peter Nymann’s shot was blocked by Gravgaard. Both Gravgaard and Hangeland played a solid game, and was on many occasions the ones preventing OB from getting really close. 10 minutes before half time Silberbauer tried to curl the ball in, and it looked good, until the hands of Onyszko intervened and sent the ball out of play.
In the second half OB once again started very aggressive, and especially Absalonsen played a good game and came more than once very close to scoring, as did both Nymann and Esben Hansen. In the other end F.C. Copenhagen started to produce chances, but neither Nordstrand, Würtz, Grønkjær or Silberbauer could score. In the dying seconds of the game came the biggest chance of the game, as Absalonsen headed on goal from close range, bur fortunately Jesper Christiansen came up with a good save. Shortly after this, the referee blew the whistle one last time; Final result 0-0!
F.C. Copenhagen – Randers FC 1 - 0
2 September 2007
The game against Randers FC was played four days after the disappointing 2-1 loss to Benfica in the first leg of the third qualifying round to the UEFA Champions League. If anyone had thought it would be a tired F.C. Copenhagen team that should play Randers FC, they quickly found out that was not the case.
F.C. Copenhagen played a tremendous first half producing chance after chance, but still they only managed to score one goal. Jesper Grønkjær took full advantage of a mistake in the Randers defence and made it 1-0 in the 14th minute. Had it not been for the posts and crossbar the score would have been 3-0 at half time, but the score was still 1-0 when the referee blew the whistle after 45 minutes.
In the second half Randers FC started to show why they were number one in the SAS League, but still it was F.C. Copenhagen creating the best chances. But with only 5 minutes remaining came the chance Randers had been hoping for, but Jesper Christensen showed why he is the National Danish goalkeeper, and made sure that all three points stayed here in Copenhagen. The win was victory number 250 in match number 500!
F.C. Copenhagen – AC Horsens 1 – 0
15 September 2007
After 74 consecutive matches in the SAS League Jesper Christiansen had to – involuntary – hand over the cloves to Nathan Coe, the 23 year old Australian, who then got his SAS League debut!
Most of the starting 11 for F.C. Copenhagen had been away with their National Teams, and that could have been the reason for the slow start to the game. None of the two teams produced any big chances in the first 20 minutes, but then Ailton decided to test Søren Jochumsen in the AC Horsens goal. Ailton fired a short that would have made it 1-0, if it hadn’t been for the super save from Jochumsen. A shame because it would have been a brilliant goal!
In the 30th minute came the biggest chance to AC Horsens. They played the ball nicely around - and suddenly Henrik Hansen was all alone with Nathan Coe – but he saved in fine style, and the first half ended goalless.
In the 57th minute came the game winning goal. Ailton played the ball to Nordstrand, who played Ailton – and after a few quick moves he passed the ball to Nordstrand in front of an open goal – and then the score was 1-0.
AC Horsens had one last chance to level the score, but the header from Lawan was to high. In the last part of the game, F.C. Copenhagen had several chances to make it 2-0, and especially Libor Sionko will ask himself how he could miss an almost open goal. The match was far from the best of season, but F.C. Copenhagen still managed to win the game 1-0, and that is what we will remember when we later on look at the season from a statistical point of view.
