Thursday, 25 February 2010 – Europa League – Result
Unirea Urziceni 1 (Bruno Fernandes 18)
Liverpool 3 (Mascherano 29, Babel 40, Gerrard 57)
Aggregate: 1-4
Reaction:
Steven Gerrard (who became the highest-scoring British player in European matches): “It’s always nice to break records from a personal point of view. I’ve been working really hard to get back among the goals, but the most important thing was to get through to the next round.”
Liverpool boss Rafael Benítez on Gerrard’s record: “It’s really good and positive for him and the club. It also shows that as a club we are playing a lot of games in Europe and hopefully we can play more games this season and he can score more goals. It is an historic club and to have a record like this is massive for him, but it is massive for the club, too, because it means it recognises our achievements in playing so often in Europe.
“We have that tradition and we are proud, and we want to continue to give him more chances in Europe this season by going as far as possible.
“We showed character – we knew it could be a difficult game because the pitch was very bad, and to concede the goal was a bad start. We needed to be calm and do the job properly. To play better we needed to score our goal as they were dangerous at set-pieces. I think once we scored a goal everything was easier and the second and third goals made things better. Still we had some problems but the main thing was to score; we did it and we had more control of the game.”
[On the extent of the injury to the stretchered-off Martin Skrtel]: “At this moment we don’t know but it could be bad news, it could be a broken foot. That would be bad news but we will have to wait and see what happens. He will have a scan on Friday, but it was a bad tackle.”
Unirea coach Roni Levy: “I knew it was an early goal and we had a long time until the end of the game. The equaliser came very early so I did not have much time to think about what our goal meant. What was important was that we were organised and looked like a serious team – irrespective of the result. From my opinion we deserved a better result.”
Unirea Urziceni: 1 Arlauskis (booked), 6 Galamaz (4 Mehmedovic, 27), 22 Bruno Fernandes (booked), 23 Bordeanu, 24 Maftei, 8 Paraschiv (18 Vilana, 56), 10 Paduretu, 30 Frunza, 32 Apostol, 7 Bilasco, 25 Onofras (booked) (17 Semedo, 62)
Subs unused: 74 Tudor, 16 Nicu, 20 Marinescu, 14 Rusescu
Liverpool: 25 Reina, 23 Carragher (34 Kelly, 61), 37 Skrtel(16 Kyrgiakos, 66) 5 Agger, 22 Insua, 20 Mascherano (booked), 21 Lucas, 15 Benayoun (12 Aurelio 77), 8 Gerrard, 19 Babel (booked), 24 Ngog
Subs: 1 Cavalieri, 4 Aquilani, 9 Torres, 18 Kuyt
Referee: Stefan Johannesson
Attendance: 25,000