Five star Bucharest too good for Nomads

Wednesday night saw The Nomads play their highest profile game of all time as we hosted top Romanian side, Dinamo Ducharest.

Dinamo arrived at Deeside Stadium with their full first team in tow, along with their full media team, club television cameras as well as the Reuters news agency who broadcast the game back to Romania live on the Dinamo website.

The game kicked off at 8:00pm to fit in with Romanian broadcast schedules and the game saw The Nomads offer debuts to new signings George Horan, Jay Colbeck and Jamie Rainford, as well as the latest signing Kyle Parle, who signed his Nomads' contract just before kick off.

The game started relatively evenly with both sides having an even share of posession for the first 10 minutes, however the class of the Romanian side soon shone through, as on 13 minutes, Valentin Lazar opened the scoring. Seconds later and it was 2-0 as The Nomads lost posession from the resulting kick off and 26 Polish striked Kamil Bilinski hit the back of the net.

The Nomads responded well with Paul Mooney keeping possession well in the centre of midfield for The Nomads, but unfortunately a number of thorugh balls were easily picked off by Dinamo's fast, intelligent defence. On the 35th minute, a loose ball was picked up and Kamil Balinski doubled his scoring for the night meeting a near post cross to hit in to the roof of the net ahead of Terry McCormick.

The Nomads again responded relatively well and shortly after Gary O'Toole stun the fingertips of Cristian Balgradean in the Dinamo goal. Just before half time however, a loose ball was picked up by Romanian international Cosmin Romei, who ran across what appeared to be the whole Nomads' defence, including goalkeeper McCormick, before slotting in to the bottom corner - a sublime goal to make it 4-0 at half time to the visitors.

The second half saw a raft of changes for the visitors, and a few for The Nomads and the game evened up a fair amount, and not long after the restart, The Nomads were awarded a free kick on the edge of the box. Paul Mooney stepped up and hit a left footed attempted towards the goal, only to see the Bucharest keeper get his fingertips to it and tip it on to the bar.

Shortly after, Luke Holden hit a speculative effort which looped over the bar, and The Nomads caused a little more pressure in the second half, but Dinamo's class shone through in the final minutes as Romanian U19 star Ionut Serban unleashed a world-class strike, rebonuding in off the post on the way in.

Despite the final scoreline looking one sided, The Nomads can hold their heads high having played well against such high level opposition - a team who has won the Romanian Liga 1 title on no less than 18 occassions and featured a number of full international players.

The game saw The Nomads offer trials to two players, debuts to four new signings, and also saw no less than seven academy players on the pitch come the end of it.

Remember, The Nomads' high profile friendly fixtures are only just getting started as Saturday afternoon sees us host Bulgarian double winner,s Ludogorets Razgrad, so make sure you are at Deeside Stadium to see The Nomads take on a side who reached the round of 16 knockout phase in last season's Europa League. The game kicks off at 2:30pm, so make sure you are there!

Match Photos