Proud St Patrick’s Athletic Bow Out Of Conference League

St Patrick’s Athletic manager Stephen Kenny praised his team for their valiant effort as they exited European competition with their heads held high on Wednesday night.

The Saints were ultimately defeated by two second-half goals from Omer Sahiner and Olivier Kemen, allowing Istanbul Basaksehir to advance.

The night took a further turn for the worse when midfielder Aaron Bolger was shown a red card for a reckless tackle late in the game, shortly before Kemen secured the win for the Turkish side.

Kenny’s side showed great determination throughout, creating several opportunities, with Mason Melia, Kian Leavy, and Brandon Kavanagh all coming close to scoring.

“Halfway through the second-half it was nil-all and it was still in the balance and then they took the lead,” Kenny said after the game.

“Then obviously the sending off hasn’t helped us for the second goal. We were still in the game at 1-0, as we’ve seen with Brandon Kavanagh’s late chance, so it’s disappointing to go out against an excellent team.”

St Pats have already beaten Liechtenstein’s Vaduz and Azerbaijan’s Sabah in earlier rounds of the competition, but ultimately fell at the final hurdle.

“It’s difficult to analyse because we’re so gutted,” Kenny added.

“The players were brilliant against Vaduz, scoring five goals. We had two clean sheets against Sabah who are a highly regarded team with a €12 million budget. They are a really serious team. We pushed Istanbul Basaksehir.

“You can see by their celebrations here, the relief of getting over the line against us because they know over the 180 minutes they’ve been in a really tough tie. We’ve got to dust ourselves down and take that defeat.”

Site Opinion

It’s been a brave European campaign for Kenny’s men, but this always looked to be a huge hurdle. Istanbul Basaksehir beat Manchester United in the Champions League two seasons ago, and last year they won their Conference League group – it was a massive test.

St Pats fans will be delighted with this performance, even if the result wasn’t quite there. It certainly sets them up for the rest of the season as they seek to close the eight-point gap between themselves and Waterford in the final European spot in the League of Ireland.


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