Champions League : Leicester 2 - 1 Club BruggeLeicester City top dogs after Shinji Okazaki leads win over Club Brugge
Home team scorersShinji Okazaki 5
Riyad Mahrez 30 Pen
Away team scorersJose Izquierdo 52
For Leicester City it was a night to savour even if they made hard work of it in the end. The club who won 2-1 at Scunthorpe eight years ago to the day to go top of League One, in front of 7,967 people at Glanford Park, will be among the select band of teams taking their seats in Nyon next month for the draw for the last 16 of the Champions League. It is easy to see why Claudio Ranieri keeps talking about fairytales.
Leicester, the 5,000-1 title winners, who had not won a game in Europe since 1961 before the start of this season, have joined Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain in the knockout stage of Europe’s premier club competition. Not only that but they have done it with a game to spare and as group winners, meaning Ranieri’s team will be among the first seeds in Switzerland.
Even allowing for the fact that they were not handed the toughest assignment in Group G, Leicester’s achievement should not be overlooked. They have won four of their five Champions League matches and played with freedom and belief in a competition in which their interest will now be extended until March next year.
The big question, perhaps, is what Leicester can do between now and then domestically after such a disappointing run of results in the Premier League. Yet this was not an evening to dwell on where things have gone wrong for them this season. There were celebrations at the final whistle, Ranieri’s name reverberated around the stadium and the supporters also sang about “going on a European tour”.
For 45 minutes it had looked like Leicester would qualify in style as they raced into a two-goal lead against a Brugge side who arrived and departed without a Champions League point on the board. Shinji Okazaki, with a beautifully taken goal in the fifth minute, gave Leicester an early lead and when Riyad Mahrez converted from the spot to register his fourth Champions League goal, it seemed like an exercise in damage limitation for Brugge.
Instead a wonderful solo goal from José Izquierdo early in the second half changed the complexion of the match and there were some anxious moments for Leicester to endure in the closing stages. They held on, however, and could easily have scored again in the final few minutes, when the substitute Demarai Gray went close on a couple of occasions.
In a sense it felt like a restorative victory for Leicester on the back of their chastening defeat at Watford on Saturday. Yet the second half was far from convincing and Ranieri accepted that the way his team reacted to Izquierdo’s goal highlighted the “lack of confidence” among his players at the moment.
It was such a contrast to the opening 45 minutes, when Leicester were in total control as Brugge gave them far too much time and space to move the ball around. The visitors also looked like an accident waiting to happen at the back. “The first half was a disaster,” Michel Preud’homme, the Brugge manager, said, pulling no punches.
Leicester’s opening goal came from a counterattack reminiscent of last season as they broke from one end of the pitch to the other in the blink of an eye. Marc Albrighton started the move by pinching possession deep inside his own half and picking out Jamie Vardy on the halfway line. With a neat touch, Vardy offloaded the ball to Christian Fuchs, who made up ground on the left before delivering a low, inviting cross that Okazaki expertly lifted high into the net with a first-time shot on the run.
Brugge were all over the place. Mahrez turned Laurens de Bock inside out before drilling a low shot that Ludovic Butelle, the Brugge goalkeeper, pushed around his near post, and then Okazaki almost scored again when Fuchs set him up for a second time after Vardy had robbed the dithering Brandon Mechele.
The second goal felt inevitable and it arrived in the 28th minute after Dion Cools, the Brugge right-back, clumsily brought down Albrighton as the winger darted into the area. Ruddy Buquet, the French referee, will never have an easier decision to make and Mahrez confidently dispatched his penalty kick, sending Butelle the wrong way.
Brugge looked resigned to defeat, yet early in the second half came a bolt from the blue. Exchanging passes with Jelle Vossen after Fuchs had been caught in possession, Izquierdo scampered clear on the right, cut inside and thumped a rising shot from just inside the area that flashed inside Zieler’s near post.
It was the first goal that Leicester had conceded in 412 minutes of Champions League football and suddenly Brugge started to play with the belief that suggested they fancied their chances of scoring another. Anthony Limbombe, a second-half substitute, found himself in a similar position to Izquierdo but was nothing like as deadly.
For Leicester, Jeffrey Schlupp and Gray both squandered opportunities at the other end to put the game beyond Brugge in a frantic finale, yet in the end those missed chances did not matter on what will go down as another historic night for the Midlands club.
Guardian
