Chris Wood scored from the penalty spot to give Nottingham Forest a 1-0 victory over Aston Villa in the first leg of their all-English Europa League semifinal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
In a matchup of two teams hoping to revive former European glory, the win at the City Ground puts Forest a step closer to what would be its first continental competition final in 46 years.<\/p>\n
Wood fired his 71st-minute penalty high into the net, giving goalkeeper Emiliano Mart\u00ednez no chance to save after defender Lucas Digne was whistled for handball.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to have the advantage but going to Villa Park will be a tough game,\u201d the New Zealand striker told the TNT Sports. \u201cBut we\u2019ve done the job here at home and now hopefully we\u2019ll build into next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
V\u00edtor Pereira\u2019s team stretched its unbeaten run to nine games in all competitions. Forest visits Chelsea in the Premier League on Monday before the semifinal second leg in Birmingham next Thursday.<\/p>\n
Forest is in a relegation fight \u2014 currently five points above the Premier League drop zone. The winner of the Europa League title earns a spot in next season\u2019s Champions League. That could create a scenario in which Forest gets relegated to England\u2019s second division but also plays in Europe\u2019s top club competition.<\/p>\n
Forest has returned to Europe after 30 years to reach its fourth semifinal, but first since the 1984 UEFA Cup. That was after Forest dominated the European Cup \u2014 the predecessor of the Champions League \u2014 and won the trophy in 1979 and 1980. Villa became the European champion two years later.<\/p>\n
Villa sits fifth in the Premier League and stands a good chance of qualifying for the Champions League domestically.<\/p>\n
Villa coach Unai Emery has won the Europa League title four times \u2014 three with Sevilla and one with Villarreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chris Wood scored from the penalty spot to give Nottingham Forest a 1-0 victory over Aston Villa in the first leg of their all-English Europa League semifinal on Thursday. In a matchup of two teams hoping to revive former European glory, the win at the City Ground puts Forest a step closer to what would …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97116,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97096\/revisions\/97116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}