Elaine of Umeå is challenged by Arsenal's Karen Carney (©UEFA)Umeå hopes blowing in the wind
Saturday, 21 April 2007by Paul Safferfrom Umea
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PrintUmeå IK will travel to Arsenal LFC next Sunday needing to come back from 1-0 down to win their third UEFA Women’s Cup having failed to take advantage of their first-half dominance when they were playing with the wind behind them. Their coach Andrée Jeglertz was left to bemoan some wasted opportunites, while Arsenal counterpart Vic Akers knows there is plenty to do despite Alex Scott's added-time winner. uefa.com hears from the coaches at Gammliavallen.
Andrée Jeglertz, Umeå coach
It was a game with two faces. In the first half we were in charge and created a lot of chances, and we should have scored at least one. But in the second half we had a problem with the wind, and misplaced a lot of passes. The second half was more Arsenal's but they didn't create many chances so a draw would be have been more fair. But we have 90 more minutes to play and if we play as we did in the first half we have a good chance of winning this next weekend. [Hanna Ljungberg] was fit to start and played quite well for 60 minutes. We needed another kind of player for the last 30 minutes, so that is why we made the change.
Vic Akers, Arsenal manager
Obviously we're delighted with the way it has gone. We knew we were playing a terrific side and we've come out on top. But we know it's only half-time, we still have another 90 minutes to play next Sunday. We know Umeå will come out fighting and it will be a similar game. You always sit there in hope you might be able to score and there were one or two little opportunities that we were hoping to do better with and didn't, that was disappointing. But Alex is that type of player who can pull something out of the fire, she had a strike from distance, which we said with the wind it was important to do as we were not troubling the goalkeeper. When we got it on target, it went in.
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