{"id":93192,"date":"2025-08-24T21:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T21:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/93192\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T21:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T21:47:10","slug":"swansea-1-1-watford-23-aug-2025-game-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/93192\/","title":{"rendered":"Swansea 1-1 Watford (23 Aug, 2025) Game Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Socceroos<\/a> star Nestory Irankunda<\/a>, who’s become an instant favourite for Championship<\/a> side Watford<\/a>, has scored his first goal for the club — and what a strike it was!<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old Tanzanian-born winger, who starred at Adelaide United<\/a> but didn’t make the grade at German champions Bayern Munich<\/a>, curled a glorious 25-yard free kick home to give the second-tier Hornets the lead at Swansea City<\/a> in the 35th minute of their 1-1 draw on Saturday.<\/p>\n

But he had to persuade Moussa Sissoko<\/a> to let him to take the kick, suggesting that his experienced France<\/a> international captain really ought to take a look at his highlights reel, which feature similar strikes when he was at the Reds.<\/p>\n

The belting strike capped another good performance from Irankunda, who proved a real handful for the Swansea defence, including fellow Australia international Cameron Burgess<\/a>, all afternoon with his speed and trickery until he was brought off just before the hour as a precaution when he appeared to suffer a hamstring knock.<\/p>\n

Snapped up from the Bundesliga<\/a> giants on a five-year deal, Irankunda had already made a big impression, and was quick to tell reporters how his ambition was to “make the crowd go wild” at Vicarage Road.<\/p>\n

He did just that when winning the free kick just after the half-hour, before picking himself up to whip the ball up and over the Welsh side’s wall and into the left-hand corner.<\/p>\n

\"NestoryNestory Irankunda, right, scored a stunning free kick as Watford drew 1-1 with Swansea on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Athena Pictures\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“Oh, my. I’ve scored some good goals but I reckon that could be in my top five,” said Irankunda.<\/p>\n

With usual free kick taker Imran Louza<\/a> out injured, he took his chance.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, you have to ask for permission, and I said to Moussa: ‘I feel confident in taking a free kick,'” explained the youngster.<\/p>\n

“He asked me a couple times: ‘Are you sure you can take free kicks?’<\/p>\n

“I said: ‘Yeah, go look at my highlight reels!’<\/p>\n

“Then after that, I just put it into the corner.”<\/p>\n

When Irankunda went off, soon after being fouled by Swansea’s new signing Marko Stamenic<\/a>, Watford’s impetus seemed to be lost and Zan Vipotnik<\/a> came off the bench for the Swans to rescue a point with an 82nd minute goal.<\/p>\n

Irankunda has been enjoying being back in the thick of the action after his confidence took a bit of a hit in Germany.<\/p>\n

“It’s been good,” he said. “I feel like myself again, a whole lot more confident. It’s fun to come to training every day. I love playing here.”<\/p>\n

He’s not the only Australian making an early-season mark in English soccer’s second-tier.<\/p>\n

Portsmouth<\/a> midfielder Adrian Segecic<\/a> again impressed in their 1-1<\/a> draw at West Bromwich Albion<\/a>, while Sammy Silvera<\/a> continues to shine for Middlesbrough<\/a> as their 2-1<\/a> win at Norwich City<\/a> took them joint-top on a maximum nine points from three games, alongside Stoke City<\/a>, who won 2-1<\/a> at Southampton<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Socceroos star Nestory Irankunda, who’s become an instant favourite for Championship side Watford, has scored his first goal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-93192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}