Egnatia beat Shamrock Rovers 5-1 at Egnatia Stadium on Wednesday evening in the third qualifying round of the UEFA Europa League. The hosts overturned last week's 3-1 defeat to the Irish visitors with a performance that found no answer for one side and plenty for the other. By then it was already clear which way the wind was blowing.
D. Adjessa opened the scoring in the fourth minute, then A. Albanese doubled the lead eleven minutes later. I. Gruda made it three in the twentieth, and Adjessa struck again before the interval in the thirty-eighth minute. Three goals in thirty-four minutes and the visitors had not won since last season's qualifiers.
E. Ndreca picked up his second yellow in the forty-fifth to receive a red card, and here's the thing — it changed everything. Substitutions came thick and fast after the break, with Egnatia bringing on T. Sobowale and A. Greene in the forty-sixth minute alongside Gruda's replacement. Shamrock Rovers were second to everything after that.
A. Albanese added a fifth in the fifty-eighth minute, and G. Burke scored the visitors' only goal in the seventy-fourth. The game opened up after the dismissal, but it was too late for Shamrock Rovers to dig in. Adjessa was substituted twice in the second half, which says something about how thoroughly he broke them.
Egnatia had 41 per cent possession and fourteen shots on target from eighteen attempts, while the visitors managed just three shots on target from twelve. The hosts registered eighty-five attacks to Shamrock Rovers' one hundred and twenty, but the accuracy tells the story. To be fair, the red card decided who created what.
The result means Egnatia move forward in the qualifying process with momentum after last week's dismissal. Shamrock Rovers have yet to find a response to what happened here. Cup football has its own rules, and they were on the wrong side of them tonight.