Nürnberg 1 - 4 hawalli (378399072)

Dark skies made the crowd of 7842 at Max Morlock Stadion a little nervous, but the rain held off. Akseli Pursiainen was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Oskar Beger and Mateusz Profic. Nürnberg tactics involved an interesting 2-5-3 combination. They fielded: Nunziante - Gerard, El-Abdallat - Brichart, Schneidmühle, Olenhusen, Cölmer, Noe - Brauch, Pajkert, Strupczewski.

hawalli decided to use a 4-5-1 set up. The following players had been chosen: Kutnik - Haj-Malik, Farsi, Abu-Ibrahim, Bin-Yaseen - Mundakar, Ibn-Bilal, Yousef, Afrouzian, Qurashi - Shirazisiddiq.

With 13 minutes played, the visitors broke through on the right after some poor defending. A. Yousef put the ball away for 0 - 1. With 32 minutes played, hawalli put themselves up 0 - 2 after an attack from the right, caused by a defensive blunder. The scorer was F. Farsi. A drive down the left side allowed Q. Qurashi to get in close and score another goal for hawalli after 36 minutes, taking the score to 0 - 3. The teams went for the halftime break at 0 - 3. hawalli claimed to have seen most of the ball, and the statistics agreed with them - possession being 58 percent.

hawalli made it 0 - 4 as F. Farsi got a touch to the floated corner kick and flicked the ball to A. Afrouzian who whipped a low drive in off the far post. The players of hawalli now seemed to think the job was done and acted more defensively, just waiting for the ref to blow the final whistle. After the ball was lifted in from the left, M. Haj-Malik was on his own in the home side's penalty area and should have scored after 71 minutes, but missed, probably due to lack of concentration. L. Strupczewski of Nürnberg received a yellow card after 76 minutes for unsportsmanlike behaviour. Nürnberg reduced the lead to 1 - 4 with 88 minutes on the clock when L. Strupczewski got the best of a ball floated in from the left. A defender managed to keep the ball from crossing the goal-line after a curling shot coming in from the right from Q. Qurashi after 89 minutes, and prevented hawalli from going up another goal. With 89 minutes gone, Nürnberg's L. Strupczewski had to leave the pitch after talking back to the referee and receiving his second booking. Possession in the forty-five minutes was dominated by hawalli, with 59 percent of the ball.

The most dominating Nürnberg player was without a doubt W. Brauch. However, P. Cölmer made a disastrous appearance. hawalli's best player was Q. Qurashi. M. Ibn-Bilal turned in a dismal performance, however. The match ends 1 - 4.