FCK vs Sparta cancelled due to weather in Austria

F.C. Copenhagen's second pre-season friendly of the summer was cancelled midway through the first half on Thursday due to heavy rain in Austria.

The Lions were trailing 1-0 to a 14th-minute goal when thunderstorms interrupted play.

It was decided to call the match off at the Koasastadion in St. Johann, in order to protect players on both sides from injury.

"It's a shame, of course, but, we, Sparta and the referees agreed that you don't play football matches in thunderstorms and certainly not when there's lightning," said head coach Jacob Neestrup afterwards.

"It's a shame, because we've now missed a training match in our pre-season, but we have to see if we can solve that in another way. Today we didn't want to take any risks by continuing when the thunderstorm didn't seem to be dispersing.

"The pitch being soggy and difficult can happen, but you don't cancel matches for that. And it was a shame that we gave away a goal, because otherwise I think we played sensibly and were good at pressing, just like against Ludogorets, so we were otherwise on our way to a good training match."

The goal came when Pantelis Hatzidiakos sent a pass beyond goalkeeper Nathan Trott, after which Jan Kuchta tapped in.

Shortly afterwards, Elias Achouri had a good opportunity at the other end, which went narrowly wide for a corner kick, but nothing more happened because the match was interrupted - and after about 40 minutes it was cancelled.

The players travel home to Copenhagen tonight after an otherwise excellent training camp, and note that next week's training match against FC Fredericia has been moved from Wednesday to Tuesday (not because of today's cancellation).