Foster joy as Saints prove Euro place is not a Juan off
WITH a personal scrapbook of variety and redoubtable quality, Ricky Foster’s experience of European football has, if nothing else, guaranteed him work on the afterdinner circuit when he eventually hangs up his boots.
As a young, raw right-back, Foster was handed the toughest of initiations during Aberdeen’s UEFA Cup campaign in 2007-08.
Inside the cavernous Vicente Calderon, he was given the unenviable task of suppressing Atletico Madrid’s front two of Sergio Aguero and Diego Forlan, La Liga’s most profilic strikeforce at that time.
But that was only the start of it. The Dons made it out of their group to be drawn against the mighty Bayern Munich; Bastian Schweinsteiger, Toni Kroos, Lukas Podolski to name a few.
‘Bayern didn’t fancy it much — we were basically playing on a tattie field that night!’ Foster laughs now, reflecting on a night when Aberdeen held the Bavarians to a 2-2 draw at Pittodrie.
Moving to Rangers in 2010, he was then pitched into a Champions League campaign which saw him line up against Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney when Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United came calling to Glasgow.
It is quite some record and Foster can now look forward to a new chapter on the continent after St Johnstone secured European football for a fifth time in six seasons with this victory over Partick Thistle.
It is the fourth time that Tommy Wright has led them into the Europa League and only those sufficiently patronising will label this as over-achievement. To do it once may be so, but to do it so prolifically speaks of a manager who has raised standards and expectations across the club.
Yet, even with Foster’s impressive CV in Europe, it is the ‘Juan’ that got away which remains foremost in his thoughts.
‘I stupidly kept my own jersey instead of trying to swap with Juan Mata,’ said the 31-year-old in reference to drawing 1-1 with Valencia in the Champions League at Ibrox in 2010.
‘When we dropped into the Europa League, I got Balazs Dzsudzsak (of PSV), who was the captain of Hungary. I am proud of that because he was a top player.
‘That Valencia game is one of my top memories. My first start in a Champions League game at a packed Ibrox, the music comes on — it was incredible.
‘People write off St Johnstone every season. But Europe has been our goal for a long time now and it’s no mean feat to secure it given the teams around us.
‘One of my best friends works for Ostersunds, Kyle Macaulay, who won the Swedish Cup. It would be nice if we got drawn to face them in the qualifiers.
‘I have no plans for the summer. We are back on June 10 for pre-season, so it really isn’t much of a break at all. But we have qualified for Europe, so the positives outweigh the negatives.’
As Wright later spoke of his pride in finishing above Hearts, Thistle boss Alan Archibald lamented what he called an ‘awful’ display from his players.
After Danny Swanson had been the meat in a Niall Keown-Danny Devine sandwich, the winger stepped up to rifle the penalty past Tomas Cerny on 33 minutes.
Indeed, Swanson might well have finished the match with a hat-trick had it not been for manof-the-match Cerny.
‘I was pretty busy,’ said Cerny, who also pulled off a wonder save to deny Tam Scobbie. ‘We allowed St Johnstone too much space to hurt us on the counter-attack.
‘The pressure is off and we should use that to play well. But it just didn’t happen for some reason.’ ST JOHNSTONE (4-4-2): Mannus 7; Foster 7, Shaughnessy 7, Scobbie 7, Easton 7; Swanson 8 (Thomson 87), Paton 7, Craig 6, Wotherspoon 6 (Alston 70); MacLean 7, Cummins 6. Subs not used: Clark, Smith, Coulson, Kane, Gilchrist. Booked: MacLean, Craig, Swanson. PARTICK TH (3-5-2): Cerny 8; Devine 5 (Erskine 46), Keown 6, Lindsay 6; Elliott 7, Barton 7, Osman 6, Edwards 7 (Nesbit 67), Booth 7; Doolan 6, Azeez 5 (Lawless 46). Subs not used: Ridgers, Amoo, McLaughlin, McCarthy. Booked: Devine, Edwards, Elliott. Referee: Stephen Finnie. Attendance: 3,630. Man of the match: Tomas Cerny.