BIRKIRKARA 0

FLORIANA 0

What was generally considered to be one of the leading fixtures of the weekend with two sides looking to turn around a disappointing season turned into a drab encounter which hardly drew any enthusiastic reacton from the crowd at the National stadum yester day evening.

Floriana’s well deployed midfielders were limiting Birkirkara’s forwards. Their counter-punching depended on the fleet-footed Edward Herrera and Brandon Paiber with Lucas Vieira guilty of some glaring misses.

This helped the Greens to carve out the more limpid openings in the that first period if anything, it was Floriana who deserved to go into the lead.

Floriana were doing most of the running with the Birkirkara defenders extended to thwart the Greens forwards’ roaming and interchanging.

Vieira crossed for Paiber but the latter missed the chance when sliding wide of the onrushing Andrew Hogg. A freekick by Arthur Oyama was taken by Enzo Ruiz but his header hit the bar. Vieira should have done better than sky the ball after being served by Herrera.

Jorginho and Thiago were brought in after the interval in lieu of Luke Montebello and Maurizio Vella respectively, changes intended to give more vision and drive to Birkirkara’s forward movement.

It was Birkirkara’s new entrant who drew gasps from his team’s fans when Jorginho embarked on solo run before being closed down by the onrushing goalkeeper Inietim Akpan.

Past the hour mark, Akpan had to stretch himself to block with his feet a close-range effort by Jorginho.

Herrera was sacrified as he had to make way for Kristian Keqi, now that the pattern of the game changed with the Stripes taking the game to their opponents.

But Mislav Andelkovic’s hard shot from a central position found Akpan well behind the flight of the ball after 80 minutes.

Brandon Paiber of Floriana was named BOV Player of the Match.