Albion played and beat Danish giants FC Copenhagen last Wednesday night at “Parken” in their second friendly on their Scandinavian tour.
Copenhagen are a young club founded in 1992 through a merger between the two Copenhagen clubs KB and B 1903, and they have been dominating Danish football the last decade. They have won their league eight times since 2001 and have played in the Champions league a couple of times. They have currently just started their season with two rounds played of their league (one win, one draw).
First half
The Baggies started with: Daniels, Reid, Olsson, McAuley, Ridgewell, Odemwingie, Dorrans, Morrison, Mulumbu, Thomas and Fortuné.
Albion started better than against Malmo almost a week ago and the first ten minutes saw both sides have one good effort each – in the first minute Fortuné fed Odemwingie a good ball, but he missed the ball and the chance was gone.
In the 14th minute Thomas won a free-kick and up stepped Reid and scored a real stunner, the sublime shot gave the keeper no chance and was beautifully placed in the right top-hand corner (via the cross bar). The perfect start!
The rest of the half saw both teams creating some chances. Copenhagen had a good shot in the 22th minute, but Daniels made a good save, during the following five minutes they also had a dangerous header and a shot just wide of the goal. Odemwingie had a good shot parried to a corner by the Danish keeper in the 29th minute.
Reid was a common entry in the referee’s notebook during the first half, one goal and one yellow card (in the 44th minute).
Second half
Long, Tamas and Cox replaced Fortuné, Olsson and Thomas.
15 minutes into the second half Thorne and Mantom came on, replacing Dorrans and Morrison.
Quite early Cox pulled a shot which was blocked to a corner. In the 64th minute Copenhagen could (should?) have equalized but their forward all alone with Daniels shot straight at him, luckily for us.
In the 70th minute two new substitutions were made, El Ghanassy came on for Odemwingie and a much appreciated and long awaited comeback was made when Gera replaced Mulumbu.
Good interplay between Ridgewell and El Ghanassy fed Cox the ball, but his shot was wide.
In the 80th Reid was inches away from scoring again when his free-kick went just over the cross bar. The following minutes saw El Ghanassy, Long and Cox having decent efforts, but lacking the cutting edge.
Daniels made a good save from a Copenhagen set piece in the 85th minute.
In the 89th Long was on his way through and brought down in the penalty area, Long himself took the penalty and scored cooly, 2-0.
Extra time saw Copenhagen close to scoring and also an unusual goal scorer for us when Tamas’ shot was deflected on a defender and into the goal, 3-0.
On reflection
All in all a solid performance by Albion. Defensively we looked good but offensively we are still a bit weak. Odemwingie and Fortuné will hopefully find their cutting edge, Thomas should use his pace more and not stop and turn back home as he is prone to - and things will then start looking better offensively too.
Albion star man was Reid, Daniels looked solid as did the whole defence and Long looked bright when he came on as so did Gera.
Attendance 3197, nowhere near as many Baggies supporters as there were in Malmo, but a good atmosphere among the ones who came (as usual).
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