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A potentially historic night at London Stadium came up short for Jarrod Bowen and West Ham. |
LONDON, United Kingdom — After just 49 seconds, West Ham United's biggest night in 46 years came to a halt.
It's possible that the excitement of reaching a European semifinal wore them out. After all, this was West Ham's first semifinal participation since the 1976 Cup Winners' Cup, when they met Eintracht Frankfurt, their Thursday opponents.
Several stalwarts of that historic Hammers team, notably the talismanic Sir Trevor Brooking, were present at London Stadium on Thursday, in a move partially aimed to stir the soul of a club firmly on the rise under David Moyes.
However, it was Frankfurt who took advantage of the situation en the route to a 2-1 victory, with Rafael Borre crossing to the far post, where Ansgar Knauff wriggled away to plant a header past West Ham goalkeeper Alphonse Areola within the opening minute.
Suddenly, a stadium that had gone through a protracted process of re-engineering a true football atmosphere after being designed as an athletics arena for the 2012 London Olympics became silent. West Ham won't miss their iconic old ground, which was a cauldron almost incapable of allowing ferocity to dissipate. In the grainy highlights of that 1976 game shown on the big screens at halftime, every player was mud-splattered by the sodden surface, but their iconic old ground was a cauldron almost incapable of allowing ferocity to dissipate.
West Ham improved after nearly 15 minutes of regaining their composure in front of a raucous crowd fearful of the worst. Michail Antonio leveled with his first goal since March 2, sliding the ball in at the far post after Kurt Zouma had headed a free-kick back across the goal.
After Areola palmed Djibril Sow's shot into his path, Daichi Kamada managed to hook enough of his leg behind the ball to put Frankfurt back in front nine minutes after the restart. Said Benrahma's entrance in the 66th minute breathed new life into West Ham's attack, clipping the outside of the post with a magnificent curling long-range attempt. In stoppage time, it was Bowen who came closest, with a spectacular overhead volley from Declan Rice's cross that shook the crossbar. The ball avoided Frankfurt goalkeeper Kevin Trapp as it bounced down and away from goal, which was unfortunate for the Hammers.
It's easy to assume that West Ham's tiny squad — despite several tries, they failed to recruit an outfield player in January — and a long season (this was their 51st game of the current campaign) were both factors in their failure to seize this chance. In order to save energy levels for this match, Moyes made six changes in West Ham's last match against Chelsea, yet they still rallied much too late in the game.
West Ham, on the other hand, never really got going, never quite gaining control of the game and constantly looking vulnerable. Their defense was lacking in passion, and they never reached the exciting heights that had propelled them to this position.
West Ham should take heart from the opportunities they generated, as well as the knowledge that they are capable of much more, having beaten Lyon 3-0 in the previous round to seal qualifying.
"I'm not sure if it's the level — the level of the games rises, and perhaps we don't always have the quality necessary to be at this level," Moyes remarked. "We have at times, but I don't believe we showed it tonight." I believed we needed to play better, but we couldn't.
"We didn't play well enough to achieve a result tonight, but it's still there, it's not gone." We'll go into the second leg with little expectation and try everything we can to make it.
"I believe we squandered a lot of chances to generate opportunities." We should have made more; we had opportunities to cross the ball more effectively but failed to take them."
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Like in Barcelona two weeks ago, the Eintracht Frankurt faithful made their presence known in London. |
The supporters of Frankfurt will make it more difficult. The Bundesliga team had an official allocation of just 3,000 for the game, but there looked to be thousands more in London, comparable to the estimated 30,000 who traveled to Spain and purchased seats in the home areas of the Camp Nou as Frankfurt knocked out Barcelona in the quarterfinals.
According to Bild, steps were taken to avoid a repeat of the incident here, but there were still concerns, with two German radio commentators being attacked numerous times in the wake of Antonio's equalizer. As emotions threatened to burst over in the second half, harsh words were exchanged between the Frankfurt dugout and close Hammers supporters.
Instead of being a memorable night in West Ham's modern history, they have the dubious distinction of becoming only the third team to lose the opening leg of a Europa League semifinal at home. Basel was eliminated in 2013 while Celta Vigo was eliminated in 2017. West Ham has a chance to avoid that destiny in the second leg in Germany next week, but they'll have to handle the pressure better than they did here.
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