Ziutki 3 - 4 Rekords (378456852)

The crowd of 2458 turning up at Ziutki Arena today were greeted with some nasty showers of rain. Timo Toppi was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Ronald Bertram and Jos Langeraet. Ziutki started off with a 3-4-3 lineup. Lineup: Pustułka - Perelló, Dror, Siller - Lang, Vargas, Kubach, Vidriksen - Cóndor, Süleymanov, Müderris.

Rekords tactics involved an interesting 3-5-2 combination. Starters: Viks - Baicher, Magyar, Dozorov - Blokland, Galdiņš, Chabert, Mirzoyan, Ülkan - Lists, Kornbakk.

P. Vargas caused the crowd to go mental with his goal up the middle after 15 minutes. This gave Ziutki the 1 - 0 lead. The muddy pitch made the game a gritty affair, which seemed to suit P. Vargas just fine. With 30 minutes played, Ziutki put themselves up 2 - 0 when the visiting defenders lost the ball to R. Perelló, who came up from the left and proceeded to coolly round the keeper and knock the ball home. At this point, it was obvious that the players of Ziutki lowered the tempo and became more defensively oriented. Rekords reduced the lead after 35 minutes to 2 - 1 as K. Blokland easily chipped the ball past the home side's keeper after a dazzling play from the right. M. Kosztyła was called on to replace Ziutki's R. Perelló after 38 minutes following a nasty collision. The home team will be cursing H. Galdiņš for weeks; he finished off a great pass from the left, knocking it past the keeper without a problem. The match was level at 2 - 2 after 39 minutes. After several obvious shirt pulling incidents, H. Müderris got himself booked. The manager of Ziutki was not happy. After 41 minutes, Rekords put themselves up 2 - 3, as T. Kornbakk finished off a strike from the left with a real cannonball of a shot. Halftime score was 2 - 3. Possession in this half belonged to Rekords, who controlled the ball 51 percent of the time.

After 62 minutes of play, P. Vargas equalised for Ziutki after an elegant attack from the right. Ziutki had a good opportunity to take the lead as F. Cóndor came up the left side, but he struck the ball weakly and it went straight into the arms of A. Viks. The guests took the lead 68 minutes into the match, after a right-side attack resulted in A. Mirzoyan scoring to make it 3 - 4. Rekords claimed to have seen most of the ball, and the statistics agreed with them - possession being 52 percent.

The most dominating Ziutki player was without a doubt H. Müderris. However, J. Pustułka made a disastrous appearance. Rekords's top performer was clearly F. Chabert. T. Kornbakk turned in a dismal performance, however. The match ends 3 - 4.