Mikael Ishak scored the only goal of the game as Lech Poznań beat Azerbaijani side Qarabag in the first leg of their Champions League qualifying campaign at Bulgarska.
Lech took the lead in the 41st minute with the Swedish international scoring a tap-in after a great team move and a fantastic cross from Joel Pereira which saw last season’s Ekstraklasa champions take the lead against the run of play.
Over 25,000 were in attendance to see if Lech could be Poland’s first club to beat Qarabag, and if Lech could reach the group stages of Europe’s premier competition for the first time in their history.
The home side got off to a difficult start as Qarabag dominated possession and sought to press Lech whenever they had the ball. Left winger Zoubir was a particular danger to the Lech defence throughout the match and he had a number of decent efforts directed at the Poznań goal in the first half.
Lech were looking to break whenever they had possession and it was through this tactic they scored with their first chance on goal. Strong running from Velde (a player much maligned by Lech fans) resulted in the ball being carried into an advanced position with interplay between him and João Amaral leading to the Portuguese passing the ball to marauding full-back Pereira. Following a fantastic low cross he picked out Ishak and the net was at his mercy.
Ishak was named captain for last night’s occasion and he produced the kind of performance that one would imagine from a player who scored his 9th goal in 11 European matches. There were reports ahead of kick-off linking him to German side St. Pauli, and it is not hard to see why many would rate him as being one of the Ekstraklasa’s best players.
Throughout the match Lech looked to play out from the back, this resulted in several close calls with the Qarabag attackers nearly pouncing on more than one occasion. Despite this, Qarabag were lucky to avoid going down to ten men, with the already booked Richard Almeida bundling into players with late challenges shortly before he was substituted.
Lech played better in the second half, particularly with the introduction of Adriel Ba Loua on the right wing and Filip Szymczak through the middle for Amaral, who didn’t have his best night.
Szymczak had a great opportunity to make it two, but he produced a weak shot that was spilled by the Qarabag ‘keeper, and Michał Skóraś failed to hit the target with the follow-up.
Qarabag were absent for large parts of the second half, although they did rally towards the end of the match.
It will most probably be the case that Lech are going to struggle next week in Baku, as Qarabag will try to replicate their first half dominance for the full 90 minutes. I would be surprised if Velde starts again over Ba Loua (or Tsitaishvili, but more on him in a moment). Velde produced probably his best performance in a Lech shirt for the hour he was on the pitch, but I fully expect him to be benched for the second leg.
It was expected that we would see one of Lech’s two new signings Giorgi Tsitaishvili or Afonso Sousa in action tonight, but both remained on the bench.
One of the other highlights of the night was the interruption of the first half, shortly before the goal, when a bird having invaded the pitch, was relocated to a cardboard box in the most meme-able event of the game. Another bird also intruded towards the end, which helpfully wasted a few seconds for the home side.
Well, that’s everything both for the football and bird-watching report. Follow @ekstraklasaexports on Instagram to know when posts go live and also @ekstraklasaexp on Twitter.
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