It was already complicated for them, but the future of Girona in the Champions League It became even more difficult with another defeat. He Sturm Graz He adds his first victory in the competition at the expense of the Catalans who have nothing to do in Europe with what they are in the League. A match in which they were forced to win, in which they had to score all three points to maintain their chances of advancing to the next round, but in which they fell drastically.
Facing a Graz team which had not yet scored points, the Gironese came to risk everything, since they still have to play against Liverpool, Milan and Arsenal. They arrived with only one victory, against Slovan from Bratislava, having lost the rest of the matches. Therefore, if they wanted to maintain a chance of appearing in the top 24, they had to win against the Austrian champion.
They were superior to Sturm Graz during a first half where they deserved better, as they seemed well established on the pitch, going on the attack in search of a goal that would allow them to get the match back on track. They tried a good part of the first act, but ended up putting an end to a team which was getting stronger as the minutes passed.
In the second half it looked like they would be able to score the goal that would put them in the fight to get into the match. play, this phase preceding the round of 16 which will be played from ninth to twenty-fourth. But they have made it clear that this is not the same team as presented in the League, which, after a bad start, managed to reappear in fifth place in the competition, after Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético And Villarreal.
Girona sinks into the Champions League
In Champions, At Girona nothing comes out. They don’t have that success in front of goal, they’re not as daring a team and, ultimately, they don’t find that superiority in play that they have against the rest of the teams in the League. And that the level of Sturm Graz, On paper, it’s not much better than most teams in the national championship.
It was difficult for them to recover the ball from behind, to find themselves at the top and even to put pressure on a Graz team in the opposing half which was growing and taking advantage of a defensive fragility which led them to take the advantage on the notice board. Mika Biereth He was responsible for giving the Austrian team the lead in the second half. He did so by taking advantage of a game in which it appeared once again that Míchel’s team had everything wrong in the top competition.
They tried until the end, bringing in players like Stuani, Danjuma, Asprilla either Abel Ruiz. They joined the Bryan Gil, Miguel Gutierrez either Ivan Martin. But it was not enough for a team that lost all its spark in the Champions League, where it was practically eliminated by adding only three points after the first five games and with a very difficult schedule, with Liverpool, Milan and Arsenal in the last three games. of this season.
