Lucas Piazon says scoring ‘a magical goal’ that rescued a point for ten-man Fulham at his former club Reading ‘felt fantastic’.
The Brazilian forward, booed for the second season in succession when he was introduced as a second half substitute at the Madjeski Stadium on Saturday, delivered the perfect riposte with a fine strike to snatch a point for the visitors after Tomas Kalas had been harshly dismissed with barely thirty seconds on goal.
Piazon, who has started a second season on loan at Craven Cottage from Chelsea, told Fulham’s official website that the result was down to a superb defensive effort from his Fulham team-mates:
For our style of play, the way the boys want to play, to be with one man down and running after the ball and defending is a little bit frustrating. But we had the fight. It was a tough game, defending with one man less is always hard, always tough no matter what team you’re playing, and the boys did fantastic.
Defensively everybody was helping, everybody was giving 100 per cent, just trying not to concede, and I think it was a brilliant effort. Our mentality and discipline was beautiful to watch I think. First half, one man down, the boys were defending fantastic. Reading basically had no clear chance to score.
Even in the second half, their goal was not a clear chance; bad cross, control, pass back, good strike. Then after this they had one or two chances, but we kept our focus, kept fighting, and thank God we got the goal at the end.
Piazon greatly enjoyed scoring the equaliser in front of Fulham’s travelling supporters – and his strike owed much to both his persistence and willingness to run at the Reading back line.
It’s always good to score in front of our supporters, especially at the Madejski where we had a tough time last season. I felt fantastic to be honest, it was a magical goal for me.
When I came on it was 0-0 still, so I was just trying to help the team. They were fighting already for 50 minutes, and in my mind I was just trying to run, defend and help them somehow. I was very happy that at the end I scored and we could go home with a point.
