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Northern Ireland Crash Out
Northern Ireland went out of the Under 19 European Championships which they're hosting yesterday in front of a crowd of 2,169 (a record for the tournament so far). They needed a 3 goal victory to go through to the next round but the German keeper denied them with 3 good saves from captian Kieran McKenna (Spurs), Kyle McVey (Coleraine) and David Buchanan (Bury).
One thing that struck me about the game was the Germans were huge as usual. Yet despite this, they seemed to fall over at the slightest sign of a breeze. More surprising is the fact the referee kept falling for it, booking Northern Ireland players for next to nothing and letting the Germans away with blue murder by comparison. Nevertheless, in this spectator's opinion, McVey had a great game in defence with some excellent tackles keeping Germany at bay and in midfield number 16, Jonny Steele (Kansas City), also impressed me.
Then in the 79th minute, Mustafa Kukukovic was dismissed for wha the UEFA website describes as "an off the ball incident" - the kraut headbutted one of our players! The referee either didn't see it or didn't want to, but thankfully one of the linesmen was paying more attention to the game.
Then in the 85th minute disasters struck as there was a bit of a chaoitic scene in the Northern Ireland goalmouth and Germany took the lead through Markus Steinhöfer. This was followed up in the 89th minute with one from Denis Epstein before Thomas Stewart bagged a "deserved consolation" for the home side - and boy did we need it.
There were other matches too
Elsewhere, Serbia & Montenegro beat Greece 3-0 (all goals in the first half) to maintain their 100% record and I could easily see them winning the tournament. In group B France beat Armenia 1-0 to top the group with 7 points and England beat Norway 3-2 to ensure their qualification in 2nd place.
UEFA have the final group tables on their website. Match reports are available from UEFA or from the Irish FA.
Semi-Finals
In the next round Serbia & Montenegro will take on England and France will play Germany.
I'm not sure which match is where but the match in Mourneview Park, Lurgan (I think the Serbia/England game but I'm not sure) kicks off at 4:30pm while the one at the Showgrounds, Ballymena kicks off at 7:30pm.