It was great that Cerny, who had come into the team for Daan Rots at halftime, scored the important goal. The Czech attacker did a great job as a mercenary for FC Utrecht two seasons ago, but suffered a cruciate ligament injury for the second time in his career in a match against his old club Ajax. FC Twente showed confidence in a full recovery and transferred 1 million euros to FC Utrecht during his rehabilitation to take him over permanently. Since his recovery, however, Cerny has not returned to his old level and this season he was also sentenced to a role as a reserve. In Florence, Cerny once again showed his quality and finished coolly after being sent away by Gijs Smal. A very important goal, as Cerny once scored a crucial goal for Ajax against Celtic as an 18-year-old.
return
Thanks to Cerny’s goal and the revival in the game after the break, FC Twente can hope for the return. It didn’t look like that at all in the Stadio Artemio Franchi at first. The opening phase was disastrous. Within one minute after kick-off, Fiorentina, for which Sofyan Amrabat was the basic player, made it 1-0 through Nicolas Gonzalez, after it was much too open on the right wing of FC Twente. And in the course of the first half it was 2-0 by Arthur Cabral after a good play by Riccardo Sottil, again over the right wing. FC Twente offered nothing in return except for a nice free kick by Michel Vlap. After the break it looked much better at FC Twente, which was better organized defensively with Mees Hilgers as a substitute. The recovery was crowned with Cerny’s connection goal, which means that FC Twente has a view of the group stage of the Conference League.
coefficients
In view of the Dutch position in the coefficient ranking of UEFA, the return next Thursday in the Grolsch Veste (starting at 7 p.m.) is very important. Last season, the Netherlands scored great in that ranking and for that it was very important that not only the usual points packers Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord and AZ did well, but also that Vitesse lasted a long time and took many points. The coefficient is an average, where the points obtained are divided by the number of participants and that is why it is so important not to have an early dropout. At home with the support of the fanatical supporters, FC Twente will hunt for a stunt next week to provide the return on the European stage with more shine.