Football
Club Brugge's Onyedika Rues Champions League Defeat to Dortmund but Backs the Team to Bounce Back
Club Brugge's Raphael Onyedika reflects on the tough 3-0 Champions League defeat to Borussia Dortmund but remains confident in the team's ability to bounce back and target qualification for the knockout stages.
Image Credits: Goal.com
Club Brugge midfielder Raphael Onyedika is disappointed with the late defeat against last season's UEFA Champions League runners-up, Borussia Dortmund but reckons it is not the end of the road and they will be back.
Rated the best Brugge player at the Jan Breydel stadium on Wednesday by Voetbalprimeur, the Super Eagles midfielder was on hand to draw a brilliant save from Gregor Kobel with a rasping strike 12 minutes in, just before his teammate Hugo Vetlesen smacked the rebound off the underside of the crossbar following a plethora of near misses which had the hosts on the front foot.
A brace from second half substitute Jamie Gittens and a stoppage time penalty from Guinea striker Serhou Guirassy handed the German Bundesliga giants a 3-0 win on the night, a result which sees the Blue-black outfit already playing catch-up in the competition and needing to bounce back when they travel to face Sturm Graz.
Disappointment on the final result
Speaking exclusively to SportsBoom.com, Onyedika rued the missed chances that fell their way in the defeat, but believes the team have the quality to bounce back from the loss.
Despite the defeat snapping a four-game winning run for the Belgian top-division side, you have to go as far back as October 2022 to the last time Club Brugge won a game in the Champions League, a 2-0 victory over Atletico Madrid which saw the Nigerian go the distance.
Thus, while things keep looking up for them in their topflight games, the talented midfielder knows they can do even better on the biggest of stages.
"We were unlucky,” Onyedika told SportsBoom.com.
"If we had gotten one early enough in the game, maybe things could have turned out differently. But it wouldn't just go in. Maybe some close calls didn't help as well. And this is the Champions League. When you get the chances, you just have to take it. At the end, you just have to look at these things and move on with the next match."
With games against the likes of Sporting and Aston Villa still to come in the new-fashioned Champions League, Onyedika and his mates will very much fancy their chances, and the 23-year-old is optimistic the result would do little to affect their confidence approaching the other games.
Commitment to the ultimate goal — qualification
"It is a long way to go in the competition, and our target is to win every other games and get in the knockout stages. We take these games one at a time as they come, and we know we can do better.”
"Everyone was disappointed, but we will be back. We can do it, the quality is there so we have no doubt about it."
Since he broke loose from the shackles of long hours huddled up in a hot classroom learning Mandarin Chinese and Pinyin at the famous Confucius Institute, UNIZIK, Emmanuel Chinaza has embraced sports and football in particular, and it helped that he grew up in the football-crazy city of Anambra.