SKN St. Pölten has to bury its hopes of reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. The Lower Austrians lost 0-1 (0-0) at Slavia Prague on Thursday and have only one point in their group after four games. Ascension is no longer possible for the “she-wolves”. Michaela Khyrova scored the decisive goal in Mlada Boleslav in the 56th minute for the Czechs, who deservedly prevailed.
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For coach Liese Brancao’s team, the two remaining games are now just an encore. St. Pölten still has the home game against Lyon next Thursday (9 p.m.) and the away game at Brann Bergen on January 31st (6:45 p.m.) waiting for them. The French, who are favored in the group, are already in the quarter-finals, the Norwegians are on the verge of promotion.
“We are obviously very disappointed because we wanted to win today. You have to say about our performance, it was good in some phases, but it wasn’t good enough to beat Slavia. We had two or three good opportunities and you have to take advantage of those opportunities. With all due respect to Slavia’s goalkeeper, it was mainly our fault not to score,” explained Brancao.
AP/CTK/Radek Petrasek After the game in the Czech Republic, only the Slavia Prague players had reason to celebrate
No chance to score before the break
The Czechs had a much better start. Khyrova should have taken the lead after just half a minute, but she didn’t hit the ball correctly a few meters in front of the St. Pölten goal. Shortly afterwards, Franny Cerna missed the next good chance for Prague, and after half an hour Molly McLaughlin headed straight into the hands of SKN goalkeeper Carina Schlüter.
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The German was probably the strongest player in the St. Pölten jersey. The Lower Austrians at least kept a clean sheet and hardly anything constructive was achieved moving forward. It wasn’t until the 44th minute that the first corner was worked out. There was no real chance for the SKN to score.
St. Pölten had no luck offensively
Brancao brought new strength to the offensive after the break. Valentina Mädl, who was missing for a long time after a shoulder injury, made her comeback and really tested Slavia’s goalkeeper Olivie Lukasova for the first time shortly after the restart. Defender Leonarda Balog was in the middle of two corners, but did not bring the ball dangerously towards the goal. Slavia survived St. Pölten’s pressure phase – and struck after just under an hour.
After a miss, Slavia benefited from tentative defensive attempts, and Khyrova maneuvered the subsequent cross pass into the goal. St. Pölten tried again to step up offensively, but had no luck. Melanie Brunnthaler pushed the ball past the goal after a pass from Mateja Zver (72nd), Mädl’s shot (74th) was intercepted clearly in front of the line. The Czech team goalkeeper Lukasova remained the winner with a double chance from Maria Mikolajova and Sarah Mattner (84th).
