SOCCER:IN THE end the Copenhagen players didn't quite live up to their manager's promise that they would be better here in Tallaght than they had been in Denmark a week ago. But it simply didn't matter.
Michael O’Neill had predicted that the hosts would need to improve, too, in order to progress and, as it turned out, he was right.
But his players simply couldn’t make the required step up and they will go into Friday’s draw for the Europa League play-offs and not the final knock-out round of the Champions League.
“We’re disappointed, obviously,” said the Rovers boss.
“I think when we analyse the game in the cold light of day we’ll see a lot of positives. I thought for 25 minutes or so we were excellent and created a quite a few chances, the Chris Turner one, in particular, stood out.
“Hopefully the experience will stand to us when it comes to playing whoever we get in the Europa League.
“Obviously you still feel a sense of lost opportunity, but the reality is that given the calibre of the player you’re playing against there is no respite. We have to be at our best home and away for every minute of the games. As it was, our final ball probably wasn’t good enough really.
“But the real problem was that in an ideal scenario, we didn’t anticipate losing a goal so early in Copenhagen and we didn’t anticipate losing a goal just before half-time. If we hadn’t conceded the one this evening the mood in the dressingroom would have been completely different, because as it is the lads clearly felt that the tie was beyond them.”
The goal changed things, too, for Copenhagen, he admitted, with the Danes looking confident about the position through the second half.
“Yeah, I think that from the time they got the goal the psychology of the tie changed, which is natural enough because there was an awful lot less pressure on them than compared to when there was just one goal in it.
“But you’re always vulnerable when you’re a goal down after the first leg, although realistically we’d probably have taken 1-0 over there. The disappointing thing, though, was not to nick an away goal over there. That would have been a big help to us tonight.
“Overall, though, I don’t think anyone who watched the two ties would think that the scoreline was a fair reflection of the balance between the two sides.
“All we can do, though, is look to learn the lessons of the way we lost and bring them into the next games with us. I believe the experience that we’ve picked up in these two games, and the others in Europe this year, will prove invaluable for everyone at the club in the future.”
