Gżira United last night slumped to a comprehensive 4-0 defeat at the hands of Radnicki NIS of Serbia, in the first leg of their first qualifying round Europa League match at the Cair Stadium.

Darren Abdilla, the Gżira coach made two changes to the side who started last week’s game against UE Sant Julia at the Centenary Stadium with Jorginho and Juan Corbolan replacing Andrew Cohen and Emanuel Okoye respectively but as, expected Radnicki proved a much tougher proposition than the Andorran side.

The home side went ahead on 14 minutes when Radovan Pankov headed the ball into the net from Aleksandar Stanisavljevic’s corner.

Eight minutes after the break, Radnicki doubled their account courtesy of Nerim Haskic who stabbed the ball home after Grbic flick wrong-footed the Gżira defence.

As Gżira struggled to come out of their defensive shell, substitute Marko Mrkic got behind the backtracking defence before he rounded Haber to slot the ball into an empty net.

Five minutes from time, the Maroons’ resistance was again breached when Haskic sent a low shot into the bottom-left corner of the net to complete the rout.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.