Well, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. For Nottingham Forest, this was anything but the meek surrender widely feared, Vítor Pereira’s side advancing to the Europa League quarter-finals after triumphing 3-0 on penalties at Midtjylland, who missed all three spot-kicks. Elias Ólafsson had celebrated his captain, Mads Bech Sørensen, winning the toss to decide penalties would be taken in front of the hosts’ most ardent supporters, but it counted for nothing and ultimately Midtjylland, who lost 2-1 on the night, were punished for being lulled into a false sense of security.
Forest stunned the Danes by earning a 2-0 lead on the night, through Nicolás Domínguez’s early header and then captain Ryan Yates’s superb strike from distance, before Martin Erlic sent the game to extra time. After 127 minutes, perfect spot-kicks by the substitutes Morgan Gibbs-White, who entered just after the hour, Ibrahim Sangaré and Neco Williams reignited Evangelos Marinakis’s hopes of Forest’s European glory. Forest can fret about Sunday’s trip to Tottenham on Friday afternoon’s flight back to East Midlands airport.
