Bournemouth rally to win 3-1 at Sparta and keep a 100% Europa League start

The picture is an AI-generated illustration, not a photograph from the match

Four matches, four wins, twelve points and a trip to Prague that briefly looked like a trap. Bournemouth answered with the goal Adams had not managed in eleven months, then two more in the final twenty-five minutes.

Thirty minutes of Czech pressure

A handball decision went against the hosts and Lewis Cook took the penalty, only to hit the inside of a post in the thirtieth minute and leave the score where it was.

Sparta, who have under-achieved domestically this season, were the better side for the first half-hour and pressed high enough to keep the visitors from settling.

It was the fourth league-phase match of Bournemouth's debut European season, one they had entered having won the first three without conceding, a start that already places them close to the last sixteen.

Ebrima Singhateh produced the goal of the night in the 35th minute, running beyond Cook and then using his feet to slip past three defenders before finishing past Michele Di Gregorio.

It was the first goal Bournemouth had conceded since the October defeat at Chelsea, and on the showing so far in Prague it looked like it might not be the last.

Guddal's error that changed the game

Two minutes after taking the lead Tobias Guddal picked up a second yellow card for pulling down Alvaro Rodriguez, and Sparta were down to ten men with fifty-three minutes still to play.

Bournemouth wasted little time punishing the numbers. Adrien Truffert won a ball on the edge of the area, Alvaro Rodriguez's shot was blocked and the clearance fell only as far as Adams.

The 57th-minute equaliser was more than a goal for the United States captain: it ended an eleven-month drought for club and country and his longest without a strike in Europe since August 2020.

From the equaliser onwards there was only one team in the match, with Sparta unable to recover the ground they had covered in the opening half-hour.

Rose's side have played a high line and a direct style across four European matches, and it is Adams, a player hired for structure rather than goals, who arrived at the far end of the season's first long drought.

Evanilson, then Rayan, then the arithmetic

Evanilson turned the game in the 81st minute, receiving Christie's pass, shifting the ball past his marker and driving a finish into the far corner from a tight angle.

Substitute Rayan added a third deep in stoppage time from distance, turning a hard win into a comfortable scoreline on the night.

Four wins from four means Bournemouth sit on twelve points with four league-phase matches still to play, and only a collapse would keep them out of the top eight.

Sparta stay on four points from a record of one win, one draw and two defeats, and their domestic season remains the louder conversation in Prague than anything that happened on Thursday.

In addition, for the visitors the more useful number may be the clean-sheet streak that ended here: one goal conceded across four European games, three of them clean sheets.

Editor's take: Ten men for an hour still took the lead chance away from Sparta. The hosts' opening half-hour was the best football of the night and it earned them nothing.

Sources and reporting time:

• ESPN; Reported Nov 5, 2026
• UEFA.com; Reported Nov 5, 2026
• The Guardian; Reported Nov 5, 2026