Fiorentina 3 – 1 Newcastle in Torneo di Viareggio

Posted on February 23rd, 2011 | 2 Comments |

Joan Simun Edmundsson, Newcastle
Edmundsson - consolation goal
Newcastle United’s youngsters suffer 3-1 defeat in their first game of the Torneo di Viareggio.

Our youngsters had a bad start to the Torneo di Viareggio, losing 3-1 to Fiorentina in their opening game in Group 8. However, the other two teams in the group – Lecce and Club Nacional – drew and that means winning our games against them means we’d still get through to the next round.

You can read the full match report on the official NUFC site, but it seems we went 3-0 down before getting a consolation goal from Faroe Islands international Joan Edmundsson.

Pedro thinks we can still qualify though and said:

What we did say as a group was that we knew we’d probably have to win two games to qualify.

We still think we can win two games. We’ve got a chance and hopefully that’ll be the case because we’ve come here to stay for as long as we can.

Willie’s just said, in the nicest way possible, that he hopes he’s away from his family for another two weeks, because if we reached the final that would mean getting home two weeks today. In an ideal world, that would be perfect.

Pedro thinks 3-1 didn’t really reflect a game that he felt we dominated for long periods.

I don’t think it was a 3-1 game. We made a mistake for the first goal, which was disappointing, but two goals in two or three minutes almost kills you.

But I thought in the second half we were outstanding. There wasn’t a lot of great football but we kept them under pressure, kept them under the cosh, so to then concede the third like we did was disappointing.

That’s something they have to learn from. They have to learn to deal with disappointment and to their credit they kept on going and Joan scored the goal.

Fiorentina had some good players – and you also have to adapt to the way they throw themselves to the ground at times. That’s something our players probably aren’t used to but that’ll come with experience and that’s why we’re here – to try and get a bit of experience of both sides of the coin, and I was pleased with their effort in keeping going.

It would have been easy to pack in at 2-0 but I would say from the minute the second goal went in, we pretty much had the ball for most of the game.

We had some really good situations, where a better final delivery would have made a difference, but I think there were a lot of plusses.

There are 12 ‘pools’ of four teams in the tournament, with pools 1-6 in group ‘A’ of the draw and pools 7-12 in group ‘B’ of the draw. Two teams go through from some pools and only one team goes from others, leaving 16 teams in the second round. I’m not sure how they decide which groups have one team through and which have two, but I know we’re in a group where two teams go through*.

We play our next match tomorrow against Club Nacional.

HWTL!

* Edit to say that I lied here – only one team goes through from our group.

NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10). Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.

Related Posts:


2 Responses