Conference League: Big Thursday for Norwegian football, PAOK ends ignominiously

The Czech soccer nation is still recovering from Sparta’s explosion against Norway’s Viking, but dozens of other Conference League qualifying games have been played. How have the results helped or hurt the Czech quotient?

Two of the three Slovak clubs have succeeded. Spartak Trnava followed up their 4:1 home win over Newtown from Wales with a 2:1 win in the return leg to add two more points to their coefficient.

Dunajský Streda also won the second match against Faroese Vikingur 2:0, while Ružomberok had a tough job in Latvia, losing 0:3 at home to Riga. The rematch was not a success either and a 1:2 loss meant the end.

The Czech coefficient is not happy with the Norwegian teams, two of them knocked out their Scandinavian rivals. In addition to Viking, Lillestrom, who knocked out Finnish SJK, and Molde, who did not give a chance to Swedish Elfsborg, will play the third round.

The coefficient is not helped by the progress of Turkish Basaksehir Istanbul over Netanya, Danish Viborg over Suduva and Brondby Copenhagen over Pogon Szczecin and Serbian Cukaricki at the expense of Racing Luxembourg.

The successes of Antwerp of Belgium over Drita, Konyaspor of Turkey over BATE Borisov, Young Boys Bern of Switzerland over Liepaja and Basel over Crusaders are also not at all pleasing. The Swiss in particular, alongside the Norwegians, improved greatly on Thursday.

The excellent news, on the other hand, is the unexpected end of Greek PAOK Thessaloniki against Bulgarian outsider Levski Sofia and Scottish Motherwell against Irish Sligo Rovers. It is the winner of the second match that Sparta would play in case of promotion.

Source: UEFA