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Newcastle continued their unbeaten over pre-season, kicking off the J-League International Series 2024 with 4-1 victory over Urawa Red Diamonds in an action-packed encounter in Japan.
Alexander Isak opened the scoring two minutes in before Urawa equalised and almost went 2-1 ahead only for Nick Pope’s penalty save. Jacob Murphy then bagged a brilliant brace with strikes either side of the break and Lewis Hall struck from range to make it four.
Eddie Howe named a strong side to face 2022 AFC Champions League winners at the 63,700-capacity Saitama Stadium, seeing Joe Willock and Sean Longstaff return to midfield after the pair missed our 2-0 win at Hull last weekend.
Miguel Almiron returned to the bench, but the game came too soon for Fabian Schar, Bruno Guimaraes, Martin Dubravka and Lloyd Kelly. Anthony Gordon and Kieran Trippier are still enjoying extended breaks after Euro 2024, Sandro Tonali is ineligible and Gillespie, Botman (ACL), Lascelles (ACL), Targett (Achilles), Ashby, A. Murphy (hip), L. Miley (broken foot), White (back), Kuol (knee) Wilson (back) made it 17 in total to miss out.
NUFC XI: Pope – Livramento, Krafth, Burn, Hall – Longstaff, Joelinton, Willock – Murphy, Isak, Barnes.
SUBS: Vlachodimos, Ruddy, Almiron, J.Miley, Turner-Cooke, Heffernan, Parkinson, Harrison, Sanusi.
It’s great to see Joe Willock appear for the first time in pre-season and he made an immediate impact. After some nice link up with Harvey Barnes down the left, Willock fired a sharp pass into Isak and the Swede had the Urawa defence back-peddling as he drove towards goal. It looked like the attack had been held up, but our top scorer got a second bite of the cherry and made no mistake, firing into the bottom corner to give us a 1-0 lead just two minutes in.
🇸🇪 Alexander Isak’s goal vs Urawa Red Diamonds ⚫️⚪️#NUFC
pic.twitter.com/E4R9y3W1ij
— NUFCBlog.co.uk (@NUFCblogcouk) July 31, 2024
It could’ve been 2-0 moments later as a defensive mix…
Source link : https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2024/07/31/urawa-1-4-newcastle-match-report-and-highlights-from-action-packed-friendly/
Author : Olly Hawkins
Publish date : 2024-07-31 12:17:24
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