The EL qualifying rounds began on Tuesday with the first match of the preliminary round. The first round of actual qualifying is next Thursday. Our Milan join in the second qualifying round on September 17 so there's a bit more waiting to do before we see our boys back in action. I'm looking forward to having a reason to follow this tournament again. I enjoy seeing the lesser known teams from the smaller leagues having their chance at glory even if the ultimate winner usually comes from a top league. Although, I guess I may not end up seeing many games with the way the TV rights work here in the US.
We play Shamrock - can't imagine it to be a difficult opponent. And Zlatan signed another year for us
CBS' website isn't even acknowledging that the 20/21 EL is a thing so probably no legal US based streams for this one. Hopefully for the group stage...
Zlatan is out with C19. Crap. Hopefully it's a false positive, and he's available for the weekend. Duarte also out. It sounds like Zlatan's positive test came on the second round of testing after Duarte's positive.
Survived and advanced. Next Thursday we're in Portugal to play Rio Ave for a spot in the group stage.
game was closer than it should've been but whatever. Daniel Maldini showing some promise and had a good tackle in the second half. Reminded me of his dad. Good to see Colombo break his duck
wildest shootout I've ever seen. Donnarumma with the end heroics. Lol both keepers were shit on penalties. Tonali should have been introduced sooner. Leao was useless and we were so lucky not to lose. Fought back tho and we have to learn from our mistakes. we literally scraped by a team I've never even heard before.
Really though, there are no bad teams at this point in the tournament. I wasn't able to watch the game, but if you look at other match ups in this round, it's full of good teams. I didn't expect Rio Ave to be a pushover. In these qualifying rounds, it's survive and advance. Just get it done. We managed to do that, even if it wasn't pretty. By the way, following a penalty shootout on twitter is more nerve racking that watching live or on tv. Especially so when it goes to 12 rounds.
We got a fun draw with Celtic, Lille, and Sparta Praha. It will be disappointing if we don't advance from the group, but I said the same thing 2 years ago...
First stop in the EL proper is Glasgow for a match against Celtic. I've always liked Celtic ever since the days Henrik Larsson was a monster on FIFA back in the early 00s. I even had a hoops jersey at one point. Here's hoping for 3 points and a fun match.
Done and done! Good job boys, really were solid except for few hiccups and we were not threatened much. Nice to see Haugue with a goal and Diaz.