A 2-0 first-leg lead<\/a> put Ferencvaros in a healthy position ahead of the away return leg, but the hosts levelled the tie in the opening 15 minutes and effectively wrapped up the tie before the interval.<\/p>\nRicorda Horta opened the scoring in the 11th minute, before an error from goalkeeper Florian Grillitsch shortly after had the Portuguese side back on level terms on aggregate.<\/p>\n
Gabri Martinez joined the goalscoring act before Horta wrapped matters up to ensure a 4-0 interval lead and a comfortable second half for the Portuguese side.<\/p>\n
Republic of Ireland international Callum O\u2019Dowda, who is expected to be named in Heimir Hallgrimsson\u2019s squad for next week\u2019s European World Cup play-off semi-final against Czechia, played the full 90 minutes at Estadio Municipal de Braga<\/p>\n
Keane, who led the club to a domestic title last season and 12th place overall on the group phase of the Europa League, was philosophical afterwards on the journey of his team.<\/p>\n
“I just told the players and the staff, I thanked them for what they have done to now in this competition because nobody, nobody thought we would be sitting here”, he said.<\/p>\n
“We overachieved in the first game, and I can only commend the players for their attitude and everything they have done well.<\/p>\n
“It has been an incredible journey and that is why I am not upset at all. I told the guys, walk out of here with your head held high and your chest out, because I will. It was a good journey and it has given everyone around the world, everyone involved in UEFA, has given us so much respect. This is a big, big thing I will take.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robbie Keane’s Europa League journey with Ferencvaros came to a shuddering halt as the Hungarian champions suffered a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-353286","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\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}