Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
Without the biggest story of these last few days has been Lincoln Red Imps shock win over Celtic. That result will go down in Gibraltarian folklore as they handed out the worst possible start to Brendan Rodgers’ time as manager of Scottish Champions. They will now look to overturn that slender deficit at Celtic Park next week and put the embarrassment behind them.
In terms of home nations activity Welsh champions The New Saints earned a respectable draw at home to Cypriot side APOEL Nicosia and will now look to pull off an upset of their own next week and continue the wave of optimism in Welsh Football.
It wasn’t a good night last night for Northern Irish champions Crusaders though as their Champions League adventure looks over already as they fell 3-0 at home to Danish champions Copenhagen. They will really have their work cut out if they are to move onto the next qualifying round
While Dundalk managed to avoid defeat to an Icelandic side as they held FH to a 1-1 draw with the tie neatly poised going into next week’s return leg. In other results Red Bull Salzburg made hard work of getting the better of Latvian side Liepaja, while 1991 winners Red Star Belgrade will count themselves fortunate that they came away from Malta with a 2-1 win over Valetta.
In the battle of Nordic countries Rosenborg will take a healthy advantage to the 2nd leg in Sweden as they got the better of Norkopping last night. Here are all the results from the Second Qualifying Round First Leg.
Norrkoping will meet Rosenborg in today’s game played at Östgötaporten Stadium. In their last meeting, Rosenborg won the match with 3:1. I wonder if J. Gustafsson ‘s team prepared us with a surprise for today. Based on the past results of the two teams, I would expect for Rosenborg to perform well during this meeting and win this game. It should be interesting to see if Christian Gytkjær will score during this match as he has a good average in terms of goals scored / match.