Julen, Nico star as Athletic Club beat Slavia Prague in Europa League

MADRID — Athletic Club goalkeeper Julen Agirrezabala made a series of excellent saves to help his side to a hard-fought 1-0 win at home to Slavia Prague in the Europa League.

The win gave Athletic seven points from their first three games in the competition, but they were made to suffer by the leaders of the Czech league, who had more than enough chances to have taken at least a draw from the game.

Slavia started the game strongly, looking to win every 50-50 ball and not allowing the home side to settle, reports Xinhua.

Simon Michez drew a flying saw from Athletic goalkeeper Agirrezabala early on, and El Hadji Diouf should have hit the target with a header in the 12th minute as Slavia forced a series of corners and enjoyed over 60 percent of the ball.

Athletic thought they had a penalty in the 27th minute when Inaki Williams went down in the Slavia penalty area, but after a long VAR check, the referee decided there had been a prior foul from home striker Gorka Guruzeta.

Nico Williams put Athletic ahead with a deflected left-foot shot in the 33rd minute, although his first touch was what helped create the shooting chance.

He almost added a second minutes later, but the pass from his brother was just too long as Athletic mounted a counter-attack.

Slavia began the second half strongly, and Julen was forced into another flying save to deny a left-foot shot from Lukas Provod.

The home goalkeeper then did well to block a header from Slavia’s giant striker Thomas Chory, but the visitors failed to make enough use of the 1 meter 98 striker and claimed another vital win.

Earlier in the day, Real Sociedad took their first win in the tournament with a 2-1 win away to Maccabi Tel Aviv in a match that was played in Belgrade.

In a ground with only a handful of supporters in the stands, Jon Pacheco put Real Sociedad ahead after 19 minutes, and Sergio Gomez doubled their lead after 64 minutes.

Dor Turgeman pulled a goal back for the Israelis with nine minutes left to play after an assist from Osher Davida, who then blotted his copybook with a red card two minutes from time.