How Hacken's Aberdeen slayer nearly left before tie as Swedes reveal what motivated them at Pittodrie

BK Hacken's Ibrahim Sadiq was their hero at Pittodrie.

BK Hacken manager Per-Mathias Hogmo thanked Ibrahim Sadiq for staying an extra match to extinguish Aberdeen’s Europa League hopes.

The Ghanaian winger was inspirational as the Swedes progressed to the group stage, while Aberdeen drop down into the Conference League. Ironically, so does Sadiq, whose new team AZ Alkmaar are also in the third-tier European competition. He was close to leaving last season but opted to remain in Sweden and then pledged to stay to help Hacken negotiate the return leg against Aberdeen despite agreeing to join Alkmaar in a £3.5million move last week. The 23-year-old lived up to his promise and scored twice and won the penalty that saw Hacken win 3-1 on the night and 5-3 on aggregate.

“Ibra was on his way in the winter but he chose to stay,” said Hogmo. “He helped us become champions of Sweden and now into the Europa League. This shows the mentality of him, he played his last game and gave everything. So a big, big thank you to him for what he’s done. As I said before the game I knew we would have to play to our best standard. I think we were that from the start today, the players were excellent.

"Defensively we didn’t give much away. The players can be really happy with their performance. The way we played was Hacken football and when you play a team like Aberdeen who press hard, it’s important to be calm and play your passes. When they play so man to man, it opens up and leaves space to create chances and score goals. We got motivated by the atmosphere. We wanted to stay calm and not get involved in the moment, that was big for the way we wanted to play."