MOTHERWELL secured a memorable victory in tonight’s Europea League fixture against Albanian side FLAMURTARI. Jim Gannon’s men, needing to overturn a single goal deficit from the first leg, romped home 8-1 winners on the night (8-2 on aggregate) to set up a tasty tie against top Romanian side STEAUA BUCHAREST.
In what was easily the highest scoring game of the evening, Motherwell didn’t waste any time in securing their place in the next round: Jamie Murphy scored a hat-trick, and additional goals by Paul Slane and Ross Forbes had Motherwell up 5-0 at half time. After the break, Forbes scored his second goal of the evening just after the restart. Further goals from Shaun Hutchinson and Robert McHugh completed the rout with 15 minutes left on the clock. Flamurtati, ran completely ragged by their SPL opponents, scored a consolation goal on 60 minutes, but the final result was never in any doubt.
While Motherwell where cruising, over in Liechtenstein, FALKIRK faltered to an embarrassing 2-0 defeat to FC VADUZ. As manager Eddie May had predicted before the game, Vaduz started on the attack straight away and levelled the tie after 23 minutes as Emil Noll fired past Robert Olejnik in the Falkirk goal. With the scores level after 90 minutes, extra time was required to separate the sides. Falkirk, needing a draw of any kind to get through went looking for the goal that would spare their blushes, but unfortunately it was the Liechtenstein side, relegated from the Swiss First Division last year who got the magic goal, as Franz Burgmeier fired in low from the edge of the box just before the end of the first half of extra time. Falkirk had 15 minutes to get an aggregate equalizer that would see them through, but sadly time just ran out for the Bairns. Their European adventure – short and not particularly sweet – ends at the first hurdle.
While we commiserate with all at Falkirk, it has to be said that this has to go down as one of the more shameful European exists for a Scottish team, ranking as it does with Aberdeen’s disaster against Bohemians (to name but one), Dundee United against Finish side MyPa-47 or Rangers’ efforts against FBK Kaunas last year.
We can only hope that Aberdeen, Celtic and Hearts do as well as Motherwell have done tonight in their respective European games next week.
You can read match reports via the Motherwell and Falkirk websites.
Tags: Europa League, Falkirk, Motherwell