Archive for May 6, 2022
We are West Ham
In the Europa League semi-final everything went against West Ham from the beginning when they conceded a goal in the very first minut of the first leg in London. This bad start was somehow repeated in the second leg when the Hammers were down to ten men early as Cresswell was red-carded in the 19th minute of the game in Frankfurt. And being West Ham and not Real Madrid, the Hammers couldn’t stage a famous comeback and suffered a narrow defeat last night, with Frankfurt deservedly reaching the Europa League final instead of our boys.
Hitting the woodwork three times in the first leg did not help, and getting Cresswell sent off early on after what had been a promising opening into the second leg in the 19th minute, that all was a sign that Frankfurt and not Seville was going to be the end of a long European journey.
West Ham had not only run out of luck: if Jarrod Bowen‘s spectacular scissor kick in the 91st minute of the first leg would have been a goal instead of rattling the crossbar it could have been a very different story! They also had run out of steam. It was not because of a lack of trying, even with two goals down on aggregate and only ten men on the pitch West Ham never gave up in Frankfurt’s Waldstadion. But you could feel that the Hammers‘ thin squad was exhausted at the end of a long season, there were defensive errors in both games that led to goals and last night the attack was lacking the urgency and guile that would have been needed to defeat a very well drilled and quick Frankfurt side.
So, in the end we might say that the semifinal was lost in the January transfer window when David Moyes failed to make a single signing and to bring in much needed cover for his star players. The fatigue of one of the oldest squads in the Premier League was evident, and West Ham‘s frustrating evening got even worse when David Moyes for once lost his temper in the coaching zone and was red carded in the final quarter of the game.
Cresswell‘s dismissal was a bad start into this evening and a deja-vu too, as we had already seen him being sent off in the game against Olympique Lyon. But David Moyes‘s action of kicking a ball in the direction of a ball kid was an unexpected outburst of anger of a usually very well tempered manager. It showed the frustration that everybody at West Ham felt in Frankfurt. However, on the pitch West Ham never gave up and tried until the final whistle.
And now, having slept over it, the emotion of “feeling gutted” does more and more disappear and make way for being so proud of the unexpected achievements of this team that really has done incredibly well against the odds and have got close to their first European final since 1976.
Next time we’ll try again. We’re always blowing bubbles, they fly so high, nearly reached the sky…
We are West Ham. Come on you Irons!
PS: It doesn’t make a bitter pill taste sweet, but as a football fan based in Austria, I can take some comfort from acknowledging that in each of the three European finals of this season an Austrian player and in one of them also an Austrian manager will take part: David Alaba (Real Madrid), Martin Hinteregger (if he gets fit in time after yesterday’s injury) and Oliver Glasner (Eintracht Frankfurt) as well as Gernot Trauner (Feyenoord Rotterdam). 🇦🇹 Though I wouldn’t have minded at all, if only two Austrian players would have made a European final!
EXTRA TIME 
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