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Thursday, September 18, 2008

A BAD START FOR ARAGONES'S FENERBAHCE!...

Luis Aragones' worries at Fenerbahce grew a little deeper on Wednesday night as they began their Champions League Group G campaign with a 3-1 loss at Porto.
The former Spain coach arrived in Turkey this summer with high hopes, but a stuttering start to the league campaign was compounded at the Stadium of Light as they came off distinctly second best to the hosts.

Porto led through early goals from Leonardo Lopez and Lucho Gonzalez, and although Daniel Guiza got one back against the run of play, Fener rarely threatened an equaliser before Lino capped the win at the death.

Fener have endured a disappointing start to the season in domestic competition, winning only one and draw two in the Turkcell Super League, and Aragones will have seen little early on to ease his concerns as Porto dominated the game from the start.

Lopez and Nelson Benitez had both gone close before Lopez opened the scoring in the 11th minute, latching on to Jose Raul Meireles' pass to fire beyond Volkan Demirel.

Porto then almost immediately doubled their lead as Argentinian midfielder Lucho Gonzalez met Cristian Rodriguez's pass to lash the ball home.

Porto had several chances to further extend their lead as Lopez and Meireles each missed a pair of openings, so it was clearly against the run of play when Fener got back into the game through Guiza's 30th minute goal.

Alex De Souza's header was blocked by Helton in the Porto goal but the ball fell to Guiza and the Spaniard tucked it away.

Late in the first half, Fener were handed a chance to tie the game when Cristian Sapunaru brought down Ugur Boral but Helton held Gokhan Gonul's free-kick.

Aragones brought off Sahin at half-time to replace him with another Spaniard, Josico, and the early signs were encouraging as Emre tried his luck with a long-range effort.

However, Porto were soon on the attack against as Mario Gonzalez went just wide with a shot from the edge of the area before Lucho Gonzalez was also off-target.

Just after the hour mark, Claudio Maldonado had another chance to tie the scores for Fener, but Helton held his shot.

Porto re-established control of the game, doing their best to frustrate the visitors as the clock wound down.

The next chance for either team did not come until the 86th minute as Alex blazed a shot over the crossbar from the edge of the area.

Porto responded as Demirel did well to parry Lucho Gonzalez's shot to safety moments later.

With the game moving into injury time, Fener poured forward in search of an equaliser, but they left the door open at the back and Lino nipped in to take advantage with a shot from the edge of the area that found the net.

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