Gerard Doherty.
Derry City o Shakhtar Soligorsk 1
Derry City go into next week’s Europa League second round qualifier second leg tie trailing Shakhtar Soligorsk by a goal to nil following tonight’s first leg tie at Brandywell.
Indeed, only for the brilliance of Gerard Doherty, City would be going into next Thursday’s away leg trailing by a greater margin, the Derry keeper producing several top drawer saves to keep Peter Hutton’s side in the tie.
A schoolboy error by Shane McEleney in the 28th minute put the visitors from Belarus in front – the central defender’s “blind back pass” to Gerard Doherty snapped up by Yanush who easily beat the home keeper.
Yanush was lively from the off, the forward being involved in a move that saw Doherty have to be alert to save from Yureevich in the ninth minute.
The Derry keeper could only watch as a stunning effort from distance by Kuzmianok crashed off the crossbar four minutes later.
Less than five minutes after the goal, Stargordsky fired into the side netting before Balanovic brought another good save out of Doherty in the 40th minute.
Derry started the second period much better, however Yanush had an opportunity to put Shaktar firmly in control of the tie but he wasted the opportunity that came his way in the 51st minute.
Doherty came to Derry’s rescue twice within a minute – first, producing a brilliant save to deny Yanush in the 61st minute before pushing a shot from Riosi on to the post.
Doherty then produced one of his saves of the season to stop a close range header from Asipenka.
Derry came more into the game in the last 15 minutes but were unable to find a way through a resolute Shakhtar defence.
Derry City: Gerard Doherty, Aaron Barry, Cliff Byrne, Ryan McBride, Shane McEleney, Michael Duffy (Stephen Dooley 63), Patrick McEleney (Nathan Boyle 86), Barry McNamee, Barry Molloy, Mark Timlin, Rory Patterson.
Unused substitutes: Ciaran Gallagher, Ryan Curran, Philip Lowry, Joshua Tracey, Danny Ventre.
Shakhtar Soligorsk: Artur Kotenko, Igor Kuzmenok, Nikolai Kashevski, Aleksej Yanushkevich, Artem Stargorodskiy, Sergej Matvejchik, Ilya Galyuza, Aleksandr Yurevich, Nikolai Yanush (Dmitri Asipenka 67), Aleksej Rios (Andrej Tsevan 88), Sergej Balanovich (Alexandre Guruli 78)
Unused substitutes: Aleksej Vasilevskij, Andrej Lyavonchyk, Filipp Ivanov, Ilya Gavrilov.
Referee: Danilo Grujic (Serbia).
ELSEWHERE
Europa League Second Round Qualifying first leg
Rosenborg BK (Diskerud 81) 1 Sligo Rovers 2 (Keane 56, North 70) 2
Dundalk 0 Hajduk Split (Caktas 9, Viasic 74) 2
IF Brommapojkarna 4 Crusaders 0
FC Luzern 1 St Johnstone 1
Aberdeen o FC Krasnodar 0
Tags:
