There are few things more beautiful and utter defensive chaos
The Europa League is a strange. With so many teams from around the continent competing, and such varying degrees of quality between them, matches can range from high-quality, enthralling encounters to comically bad. That is the beauty of the competition that teaches us more about Eastern European geography than anything else.
On Thursday night (that is when the competition is played, in case you weren’t aware), Standard Liege welcomed LaLiga leaders Sevilla to the Stade Maurice Dufrasne. The Belgian side secured all three points with a 1-0 win, helped by the fact that Pablo Sarabia was sent off after 68 minutes.
And it was so nearly 2-0, as a defensive mix-up between a Sevilla defender Simon Kjær and goalkeeper Tomáš Vaclík gifted Standard Liege the perfect opportunity to double their lead.
Kjær, attempting to knock a header back to his goalkeeper, was unaware that Vaclík had already run out to collect the ball. Classic. What followed was a straight race between Vaclík and Standard winger Moussa Djenepo. The Seville ‘keeper just about managed to prevent the own goal, but danger wasn’t averted completely.
Djenepo laid the ball on to an onrushing teammate, who was setting himself to shoot. That was until another attacker arrived, stealing the ball from his teammate, blasting is straight into the bar, wasting the chance.
ICYMI
There was absolute carnage at the end of Standard Liege v Sevilla tonight. 😂#VMSport #UEL pic.twitter.com/v4INJvEcQs
— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) November 29, 2018
Safe to say nobody came out of this passage of play looking good, except the Europa League. What a competition.
