SERBS YOU RIGHT
West Ham 3 Bačka Topola 1
As West Ham embark upon their third successive year in Europe, the word ‘routine’ slips effortlessly into the report lexicon, with an awareness that some of the opposition faced in any given season may well prove unknown beyond swift thumb scrolls through featureless European football websites.
So it is with TSC Bačka Topola (pronounced ‘Baashka’) of Serbia, who play their football just 50km from the Hungarian border. Rumours abound that their neighbour’s leader Viktor Orbán has poured private funds into this club that coincide with their recent success in European competition qualification, including a near miss defeat at the hands of FCSB in a September 2020 game that finished 6-6 and in which they were finally beaten 5-4 on penalties. Red Star and Partizan Belgrade are the two Serbian giants who might be expected to provide any Serbian opposition that a European team would encounter in a UEFA competitive fixture. But not this evening.
The travelling away fans could have travelled to the game in a single double decker bus. The sight of the total away section covered by a featureless roll of black tarpaulin therefore takes something of the oomph out of Hammers’ first competitive challenge of the new European campaign.
What goes on in front of us is a quite different matter. Bačka Topola play slick and swift football at the back in their own half, where they spend most of the first forty-five minutes, and the much-changed West Ham side are unable to get any kind of meaningful foothold on the game for much of the first half. The closest they come to scoring is when a Ward-Prowse free kick is deflected millimetres over the visitor’s crossbar.
In the second half – a rare slip from Angelo Ogbonna on a pitch still slippery after the pre-match thundershower lets in Petar Stanic who bears purposefully down on goal before firing the ball past Fabianski. West Ham’s deposed ex-Premier looks majorly miffed as fetching the item from his net is about the first thing he’s had to do this evening.
Thankfully the goal seems to have woken up the slumbering East End giants, and once Michail Antonio comes on to replace Pablo Fornals, the goal action commences. First Mohammed Kudus rises at the far post to make limited but purposeful contact on Benrahma’s cross for the equaliser. The Ghanaian then hits his second just four minutes later with a more definitive header from James Ward-Prowse’s delivery. A two goal gap is established seven minutes later when the substitute Tomas Souček meets a Ward-Prowse corner definitively and powerfully at the near post. Those assists will keep on coming, and though Declan Rice may be satisfying his Champions League ambitions up the road at the Emirates, West Ham have also taken firm steps tonight to top their group early on in this European campaign.
1 Lucas Fabianski, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 5 Vladimir Coufal, 23 Thilo Kehrer, 27 Nayef Aguerd, 15 Konstantinos Mavropanus, 11 Lucas Paquetá, 22 Saïd Benrahma, 8 Pablo Fornals, 18 Danny Ings, 14 Mohammed Kudus
Substitutes: 33 Emerson, 9 Michail Antonio, 28 Tomas Souček, 14 Maxwell Cornet
Goalscorers: Mohammed Kudus (2), Tomas Souček
