West Ham’s chances of a first European final in 46 years were dealt a blow as they produced one of the narrow football scores of the midweek action in the Europa League. Ansagar Knauff put the visitors ahead in the first minute before Michail Antonio equalized in the 21st minute. Daichi Kamada scored the winner in the 54th minute to leave the German side in the driver’s seat.
Managers Reaction
West Ham boss David Moyes: “Not what we wanted – we didn’t play well enough to get a result tonight but it’s still there, it’s not gone. We’ll go to the second leg probably not fancied and do what we can to still make it. I didn’t change too much [after the first goal], I thought we deserved to get back in the game and if we had shown enough quality in the final third we might’ve got back in front but we didn’t. Started slow in the second half and gave away a poor goal for the second. I think we missed an awful lot of opportunities to create chances, we should’ve made more, we had chances to cross the ball better and didn’t take them, and we missed big chances in the box. We made some changes and had one or two efforts, we’ll have to make more next week.”
Eintracht Frankfurt head coach Oliver Glasner: “I am very impressed by the lads, how they played, how they took the lead in the first minute. It’s just impressive, the confidence they showed. West Ham threatened then, but we did well defending the set-pieces. Leading after the first leg is always good, even though we were a little bit lucky from their bicycle kick. The lads did so well, they positioned well against their very physical defense and Borre moved well between the lines, so we evaded their man-marking.”
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