Aberdeen recorded their first European group stage win in 16 years as a much-changed outfit saw off 2022 Europa League winners Eintracht Frankfurt.

Goals either side of the break from Luis 'Duk' Lopes and Ester Sokler were enough for Barry Robson's men against a side which included a former World Cup Final goalscorer in Mario Götze.

Seemingly with one eye on Sunday's League Cup Final, Robson made eight changes to his side after beating Hearts on Saturday.

Kelle Roos, Stefan Gartenmann and Jack Milne were the trio to retain their places.

It was the visitors who were seeing most of the ball in the first half, perhaps not unexpected after their 5-1 hammering of German champions Bayern Munich on Saturday.

But it was Aberdeen who drew first blood with their first shot of the evening.

A tempting cross in from Shayden Morris was met by Duk on 41 minutes who tapped home infront of an ecstatic Red Shed.

The Dons continued to battle and defend well in the second half, despite a number of changes being made by Robson.

Indeed it was one of his substitutes who doubled the lead after a delightful through-ball from Dante Polvara released Sokler on 71 minutes, the 24-year-old Slovenian made no mistake in looping his effort over a helpless Jens Grahl in the Frankfurt net.

Robson 'proud' of unforgettable win

“I’m so glad the boys got that win on the board tonight because they’ve been worth it in Europe. Playing in these group games in Europe are things that you’ll look back on as big moments in your career, and they’ve done themselves proud," Robson told RedTV after the game.

“I think they deserve credit for that because it isn’t easy fighting on three fronts and I think we’ve done it really well when you think we’ve had four away games off the back of European matches. The boys have always had belief, they’ve always had confidence, but they’ve simply been tired sometimes. We haven’t looked at our best on a few occasions, and that’s been down to fatigue.

“But they’re a great group that bounce into training every day, and they’ll do that again tomorrow morning as we start to prepare for another big game on Sunday against Rangers. They are the favourites on Sunday, we know that, but we need to put on a really good performance at Hampden.”

“These European games take a lot out of you emotionally because the demands are high. But we’ve scored 10 goals in the group, that is not easy to do against that quality of opposition. I’m proud of the players for the way they’ve performed overall but then tonight, that’s as good a result as Aberdeen has had here for a long, long time.

“You can go right through the team and they were excellent, they deserved that result. They’ll always remember that game against a team worth millions, playing against a World Cup winner, a really good technical team with great movement that is really hard to stop.

“The boys that came in tonight were excellent, it was the same in Helsinki, we were able to bring players on to give us a helping hand at the right times as well. We worked a lot over the last few days on having a good structure and hitting some good transitions, and it worked perfectly tonight. We got the balance right tonight and we got our rewards for it.”

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