With both now having earned international clearance for their move to Brookburn Road, Jack Sergeant and Jamie Coombes helped create history over the past 7 days as they both played a part in their national side Gibraltar’s two wins in the UEFA Nations League.
As reported in the Manchester Evening News, the duo celebrated a victory over Armenia last Saturday. Playing away in the Hanrapetakan Stadium, Yerevan against Arsenal’s Henrikh Mkhitaryan – Armenia’s most notable player – a 50th minute Roy Chipolina penalty was enough to gain Gibraltar their first competitive victory and points. Sergeant and Coombes both started the game, with Jamie replaced by Reece Styche on 70 minutes, while Jack saw out the full 90.
Clearly on a roll, Gibraltar return to the Rock yesterday evening to take off Liechtenstein. Having lost the reverse fixture 2-0 – a game in which Sergeant featured – things were looking to be going the same way when Salanovic put the guests ahead after 15 minutes. Sergeant started the gate, but it the second half introduction of Coombes played it’s part in energising the side, who scored twice in 5 minutes (Cabrera 61, R Chipolina 66) to seal the win. Unfortunately, Jamie picked up an injury shortly after the second goal, and had to be replaced on 75 minutes. Regardless, he will have been proud of the way his side held on, and propelled themselves into second in the table – just 3 points behind leaders Macedonia, and with 2 games to play.
Gibraltar next play in the Nations League on the 16th November against Armenia, before a potential crunch match away in Macedonia on the 19th November – a game which could decide the winner of the group, if Gibraltar keep up their current run of form, especially as the tiebreaker for positions is first done on head-to-head results. The structure of Nations League means that the winner of each league is put into a playoff against other divisional winners (as it stands, Georgia, Luxembourg, and Kosovo are the other league leaders outside of Gibraltar’s group) – with the winner of that playoff earning themselves a place at Euro 2020. There remains a long road ahead, but the dream is still alive for head coach Julio Cesar Ribas’ men. All at the club would like to congratulate both players and their international teammates on two superb victories, and look forward to greeting them back to Brookburn Road soon.
You can download the programme for Gibraltar vs Liechtenstein in PDF format here.
See the current Group D4 table and remaining fixtures below:
Friday 16 November
Liechtenstein v FYR Macedonia
Gibraltar v Armenia
Monday 19 November
Liechtenstein v Armenia
FYR Macedonia v Gibraltar
Read some Twitter reaction below:
