Thursday 22 July 2010

Europa League in Dublin | Sporting Fingal V CS Maritimo

Tonight the expectations were high for the Irish team Sporting Fingal. They had suffered a defeat (3-2) last week when playing away, at the home of portuguese team CS Maritimo.















Personally this was a result I liked, as I would like any Portuguese team to win... but in all fairness I admit that I would be happy if the Irish team had won.

The stadium was half-full, literally. The bigger area was almost sold-out and the other smaller areas were closed to the public. The team from the Madeira island had support in the crowd.. not too many (maybe 50 people?) but they could be heard!

CS Maritimo pressing Sporting Fingal

The qualifying was open and either team could still make it to the next round of qualifiers. Maritimo scored first, then again, but Sporting Fingal equalized in the second-half.

The final (2-3) score was fixed by KanĂº (89mn), who scored this nice goal in a counter-attack play.
KanĂº scores the last goal











The Irish people are great! Even tough the result was not in their favor we were soon invited for some pints in the closest pub. This Irish team is still very young but has a nice support crowd, who were chanting and cheering most of the time :)
In the end the players had fair-play too, which is always good to see.

Fair Play




















The photography experience was interesting. It was the first time I tried to photograph professional football. The Dalymount Park stadium is small and you can be just close to the pitch.. of course shooting sideways is not the best angle, but access to the press area was blocked by security.. the lens I used was the Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VR. All photos were around f3.5 @ 1/160s using ISO 1000 and fluorescent WB. I can see why the photo-reporters use 300,400mm or even 600mm lens. On the picture below I think the camera is a Nikon D3 coupled to a 400mm lens, not 100% sure on the lens..

Press photographer

All photos copyright of Luis Faustino


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