James Maddison’s Middlesbrough match-winner was a thing of beauty for Daniel Farke.


Norwich City’s young midfield maestro thumped home a first half goal to seal an impressive 1-0 Championship win at the Riverside on Tuesday night.

Farke, however, was keen not to heap too much praise on the former Coventry City starlet.

“I said before I always see just beautiful goals from team. Every goal we score for me is beautiful,” he said. “There are never any ugly goals but that was special. Be careful with praising our young lads too much. Sometimes we tell them they have so much potential, they are high class and they are the future of the club and they believe this and stop working. I don’t want to praise the young lads too much but James Maddison scored a spectacular goal.”

Norwich’s latest defensive masterclass came in testing circumstances with a number of players unavailable and some of those on the substitutes’ bench struggling with knocks.

“It is always a good thing in life and football especially when you are able to improve. That is a good sign,” said the German head coach. “You have to bring it on the pitch each and every game. This was a special game. Nelson (Oliveira) could just play for 15 minutes or whatever. Marco Stiepermann was a high risk. He played the last 20 minutes with many tablets to get through the game and cope with the pain.

“Wes Hoolahan was still a little bit injured. That was a difficult situation. When you work all together with that fighting attitude you are able to reach extraordinary things. I think we did that in this game because not many teams will win here at Middlesbrough.”

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Farke’s gameplan worked perfectly against Garry Monk’s highly-fancied squad.

“I just have compliments for the lads. We knew we faced a really top team, a strong favourite for the league,” he said. “We had to create a special plan for this game. It is one thing to work on it, it is another to bring it on the pitch. This was a special performance because we had to do without so many weapons. We normally like to control the ball and possession but we had to take Middlesbrough’s threats away. All in all the guys did it really well. There was two or three dangerous crossing situations but we didn’t give away too much overall.

“I am really happy. We wanted to mirror Middlesbrough and take away their strengths. A player like Adama Traore is too good for the Championship. We did that. We tried to double up on the wingers and close the centre and be there with some counter actions.”