Europa League Half time report: Porto vs Rapid Vienna
Porto were the second Portuguese team to play on the opening night of fixtures in the Europa League. The team was doing decent domestically but wished to reproduce some of their glory on the European stage.
The Portuguse heavy weights; Porto were going to face Rapid Vienna who finished third in the Austrian League last season. The Porto manager Andre Villas-Boas was more than aware of the threat that the Austrian side had on the counter and prior to the match
he was caught saying:
"Rapid are a team that can surprise, like Braga, because they exploit the mistakes of opponents, they are balanced and have good outputs for the counter-attack, they can be aggressive,'' Villas-Boas said.
"We must be able to maintain our accuracy and concentration. We will have to be patient in possession, without being exposed.
"Of course I prefer to concentrate on attacking football, that's the way we think about the game, but that can leave us exposed.''
The Porto manager was clearly not planning on taking any chances on the night.
Experts believed that Porto were the favourites to win this game, mainly due to their superior experience on the European stage.
The match kicked off with both side looking to dominate possession. However it was Porto who were doing the better talking when they had the ball at their feet.
Despite the possession being evenly distributed amongst the two sides, Porto looked to be the far more dangerous side on the night. Porto had thirteen shots at goal, compared with the two that the Rapid side had.
Porto took the lead on the twenty sixth minute mark as a result of this bombardment of shots. Cristian Rodriguez passed the ball to Jorge Pires Rolando who took a first time shot from twelve yards out with his right foot and gave the home team the lead.
That was the only goal score during the opening forty five minutes as both the teams went into the half time break once the whistle was blown.
Two Rapid players picked up yellow cards in the opening half, those two players being Andreas Dober and Thomas Hinum.
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