Saints’ boys of summer see their season in the sun finally come to a bitter end
Kenny sets his charges a target to take Champions’ route through Europe
It’s true you know, football can take you to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Unfortunately for St Patrick’s Athletic, there was to be no miracle of Istanbul. Instead, this was just heartbreak in Istanbul. After the highs of an impressive five-match unbeaten run on the continent this summer – from Liechtenstein and Azerbaijan to Turkey – results don’t come much more gutting than this.
This city is often called the ‘gateway to the east’, but for the Saints, there was no passage into the history books here. On the cusp of the club’s first European group stage qualification, it wasn’t to be in Turkey. The moments the club have enjoyed on this summer’s journey are often the days of players’ lives, but this play-off defeat served as a reminder of how quickly and how cruelly it can end.
Victory would have seen St Pat’s experience the greatest night in their 95year history. But now, sitting seventh in the Premier Division and out of the FAI Cup having failed to defend their title, their season appears to be over. They have banked €1.2m in UEFA prize money for their efforts, although that sum could have risen to over €4m had they crossed this finish line and dumped out the Turkish champions – a side who secured their fifth group stage spot in eight seasons here.
Impressive
Of course Stephen Kenny’s men can be proud of an impressive European campaign, which saw them become the first Irish outfit to reach a play-off having not started the campaign in the Champions League, but that will be of little consolation. There are no words that will come close to comforting them on the 3,000 kilometre flight home to Dublin today. This one will hurt.
Kenny had said that achieving group stage football would be “life-changing” for his charges, but now it will likely be at least 2026 until the Inchicore side are back competing on the European stage again. They were so close here that they could almost taste it.
The Saints stood one step away from an extraordinary achievement, one which would have seen two Irish clubs competing in European group stage football in the same season for the first time. But when the full-time whistle blew at the Basaksehir Fatih Terim stadium, severeal Saints players stood and stared at the pitch in silence, contemplating what might have been.
The atmosphere was vastly different to the raucous and hostile environments one would usually find at Fenerbahce, Besiktas and Galatasaray – Istanbul’s big three, with 69 top-flight titles between them. The home support did make their voices heard, but the stadium was less than a third full. This wasn’t the “welcome-to-hell cauldron” as Kenny said last week, with the 100 St Pat’s fans situated in the corner of the ground as the stand to their left stood completely empty.
The Saints’ faithful liked what they saw early on with 16-year-old Mason Melia and Kian Leavy going close before the interval. Basaksehir’s skipper Omer Ali Sahiner broke the deadlock and 18 minutes later, Olivier Kemen’s header broke Saints’ hearts. The dream was dead.
“Over the European campaign they have been absolutely fantastic,” Kenny said after the defeat.
“To score five goals against Vaduz, then to beat an outstanding team in Sabah, two clean sheets against a side with a €12m budget. Then to push Basakse
hir, you saw the celebrations here at the end. We’re disappointed. Tactically they are a challenging team to play against. We matched them and we knew that if we could nick the ball and intercept a pass then we would be in with a threeon-two or four-on-three.
Disappointing
“The [opening] goal itself, it is what it is, a bit of a deflection, the ball fell into his path and he buried it. You were up against it then but we knew ... we said to the players at half-time, ‘if we go a goal up we’ll keep going, and if we go a goal down we’re still very much in it’. You only need one. The sending off was obviously disappointing, and killed us really, then the second goal followed.
“Obviously they area serious, top-class team. We have given them an incredible battle over the 180 minutes. We probably should have taken a lead out here, but we didn’t. We just came out on the wrong side in the end.”
All that’s left for the Inchicore outfit this season is nine league games, beginning with Drogheda at home this Sunday. Sitting 17 points off the summit, the wait for a league title goes on at Richmond Park, but Kenny looked ahead to building for the future.
“This route is hard. The Champions route is the one to take, but that won’t be easily [won]. with Derry City, Shelbourne up there, and Shamrock Rovers having been champions. That’s what we have to do, we have got to build a team to compete with those clubs ... and we’ll look to do that.” Kenny will hope that after a remarkable summer, the Saints will rise again.