CONFERENCE LEAGUE. Feyenoord hold out in Marseille and play the final against Mourinho’s AS Roma | Foreign Football

That there was a special match on the menu, that was of course clear to the Feyenoord players for a long time. But when the own bus driver of the Rotterdam team on the way to the Stade Velodrome was ordered by the French police to turn around on the highway before the game, they looked at each other with frowning eyebrows at Feyenoord.

There was simply no way to get through to the football temple of the French people’s club and on the side of trainer Arne Slot a brick flew through the (outer) window. In Marseille, they wanted to eat the Rotterdammers with their skin and hair, after the mishap last week in the Kuip (3-2). For half an hour it was mainly to stop what Slot’s formation could do. And Dimitri Payet was the conductor as expected. The 35-year-old star saw a goal attempt blocked and moments later the former international fired just past keeper Ofir Marciano’s goal.

It was immediately Payet’s last achievement, because after half an hour he suffered a calf injury and had to leave the field. A loss before the game, but probably a relief for Feyenoord. After all, Payet was directly involved in eleven of the fifteen shots in both duels with the Rotterdam team. Payet’s retreat and the accompanying entrance of ex-Ajacied Arek Milik also immediately initiated the phase in which Feyenoord increasingly came out of its shell. An attempt by Guus Til was blocked by Gerson, Cyriel Dessers did the same after a cleverly taken free kick.

The Feyenoord supporters, who had been drenched in rain for hours before the game in the mandatory fan zone at the southern French beach, increasingly felt that the Conference League final in the Arena Kombëtare in Tirana in Albania was a realistic scenario.

But there was still a nerve-racking second half where Marseille was allowed to play to the fanatical supporters. And feel free to make it a blood fanatic. Rongier seemed to shoot ‘L’OM’ to 1-0 but his effort was weak and thus an easy prey for Ofir Marciano. Moments later, Milik and Harit were fiddling just a few meters from the Rotterdam goal. But the strong acting center Trauner and Senesi and nobody’s confused backs Geertruida and Malacia grew more and more in their role.

It was a matter of counting down in match eighteen of Feyenoord in the Conference League. It brought the Rotterdammers from Pristina, Lucerne, Borås, Haifa, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade, again Prague and Marseille. In Tirana, the club will be allowed to play a European final for the first time in twenty years later this month. That prospect will ensure that the next three weeks in Rotterdam will feel like 2017 when the national title was won again.

José Mourinho’s Roma had enough of a 1-0 win against Leicester, with Youri Tielemans in the base and Timothy Castagne as a substitute. Tammy Abraham eliminated our Red Devils with an early header goal. For AS Roma, it has even been since 1991 that they played a European final. Those years will soon be removed from the tables. Courtesy of the Conference League.