City taught lesson by Norwegians
Glasgow City were tonight taught a tough lesson by Norwegian side Roa IL in their first game of the last sixteen of the UEFA Women’s Cup, losing 6-1.
City got off to the perfect start scoring within the first five minutes. Good play from Katharina Lindner and Ruesha Littlejohn down the left, set up Rachel Corsie and the City midfielder hit a fantastic strike from the 20 yards into the top left hand corner of the Roa net.
City’s great start was then undone when a mistake at the back allowed Roa straight through on the City goal and the Norwegians made no mistake one-on-one with Angie Livingstone in the City net.
Glasgow City were shell shocked to be undone by their own errors and the next 20 minutes proved very costly for the City side as Roa took a hold of the game and punished City for every further error they made, hitting another three past Livingstone in goals.
Half time 4-1.
In the second half, City started brightly and should have pulled one back straight away through Danielle Stewart, but unfortunately for City she snatched at her effort and it went wide.
City looked a lot more positive and composed in the second period, but in the end their pressure on the Roa goal came to nothing. The hosts meanwhile continued to take advantage of every effort that came their way and scored another two, making it a very impressive scoreline for the Norwegians.
It was a very disappointing start for City, but at this level the difference in finance and facilities for women’s football compared to home is very apparent. City boss Peter Caulfield said, “Roa managed to send two officials over to scout our game against Celtic on Sunday. That is a completely different level to us financially, but something I hope one day Scotland can emulate because until we get the same amount of support, Scotland will always find it difficult to compete at this level. I am extremely disappointed to lose so heavily tonight. We made a number of very uncharacteristic mistakes and unfortunately we were punished for them by a very good side. You cannot afford to make errors at this level and tonight was evidence of that. We need to pick ourselves up now for our next match against Zvezda 2005. They defeated the favourites Frankfurt tonight, which I think highlights the strength of this group.”
09.10.08
