European Cup-Winners' Cup Final 2016 - 17

(in Dusseldorf)

Vasas Budapest        (2) (3)  5
Red Star Mossley      (1) (3)  3  (after extra time)

Double disappointment for Mossley as, following Saturday’s defeat at Hungaria that cost them the league championship, their first European club competition final ended, after a pulsating 120 minutes’ football before 3,284 spectators in Dusseldorf, with Hungary’s Vasas Budapest eventually overcoming Red Star to add the Cup-Winners’ Cup to their previous haul of five Champions’ Cups and once again claim pre-eminence as continental trophy winners.

Starting as hesitantly as they had at Hungaria, Mossley fell an early goal behind before settling into the occasion and establishing a foothold in the match with an equaliser on the half-hour. Vasas, displaying the virtuosity that has long been their hallmark, then stepped up a gear to score again and take that 2 - 1 lead into the half-time interval, a fair reflection of the cut and thrust of the opening period’s play. Mossley regrouped and emerged determined to impose themselves, playing with a pace and panache that Vasas, for all their defensive efforts, found irresistible, to the extent that, by the 65th minute, Red Star had turned the match on its head and held a 3 - 2 lead. However, this proved but a precarious advantage as, drawing on the club’s long history of victorious experience, the Magyars engineered a 78th-minute equaliser to take the final into extra time. There, Vasas assumed control for all Mossley’s sterling efforts to maintain parity and, with a further strike in the 99th minute, edged in front for the third time on the night before ending Red Star’s hopes with the decisive goal in the second period of the additional half hour, thus taking over custodianship of the trophy from last season’s inaugural winners Raba ETO Gyor, whom Mossley had vanquished in the semi-finals.

Vasas Budapest will defend their trophy next season but Mossley, domestic and European runners-up as were their near-neighbours Stalybridge Celtic last term, alas will have no continental adventure to embark on.