Europa League qualifiers: Hat-tricks, red cards, and penalties galore for opening round

The UEFA Europa League! Humbler than the dazzling elite of the Champions League above, yet more exclusive than the tinpot hordes of the Conference League below. The (second-)best and brightest teams this side of the Ural Mountains compete to win the honour of a European title – or in the case of last year’s finalists, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, to salvage an inch of pride from a cataclysmic season.

Yet even despite the ignominy of last year’s climax, the contest remains, in this author’s opinion, the greatest of the European cups. Balancing exclusivity with achievability, right from the first qualifying round (held this year on 10 and 17 July) there remains an outside chance that the team who’ll eventually triumph have already begun their campaign.

Of the first 16 teams to kick off this year’s tournament, it’s probably Ukrainian heavyweights Shakhtar Donetsk who stand the best chance of going all the way to the final. The Miners, who have played in the Champions League for 14 of the last 15 years, entered something of a wobble last year (hence ending up in Europe’s second tier this time round). But any doubts were put to bed in the opening round’s first leg with a 6-0 demolition of Finland’s Tampereen Ilves. The Ilves, who to their credit came second in their own domestic league last season, had no answer to an uncompromising Shakhtar home side, who attacked incessantly over the course of 90 minutes to shatter their opponents. In a far more subdued second leg, the Finns just about managed to keep a clean sheet, but they limp off to the Conference League thoroughly shellshocked, whilst the triumphant Pitmen can look forward to a far more competitive second qualifier against Turkey’s Beşiktaş.

Highly-strung tempers promptly snapped completely at one game’s end, with no less than four red cards handed out to players

Rivalling Shakhtar’s domination of Ilves for scoreline action was a much more evenly matched showdown between Sabah FC of Azerbaijan and Slovenia’s NK Celje. The first leg, held in the Azeri capital, Baku, saw the visiting Counts make away with a last-minute winner after both sides scored in the opening ten minutes. A subsequent penalty by the Owls, followed by a Slovenian equaliser in the second half, left the match deadlocked until midfielder Darko Hrka rattled in a shot in the 93rd minute. Sabah quickly levelled again within ten minutes of the second leg’s start, with striker Joy-Lance Mickels going on to score a hat-trick with two goals in two minutes to keep the Owls at pace with Celje’s own successful shots. In the end the brawl came down to extra time, with Celje scoring the crucial goal to advance 6-5 for their first time in a Europa League fixture.

For the fruits of their labour, Celje will now face Cypriot side AEK Larnaca after the Yellow-greens scraped a bitter 2-2 win over Serbia’s Partizan Belgrade. In the initial encounter at Larnaca’s AEK Arena, the only goal of the game went to the hosts, setting up a finely-balanced match for the following week. Here, the Steamrollers came from behind to drag the game into extra time, and then, after the Yellow-greens scored their own goal, equalised again in the last two minutes of the match. At the same time as England’s Lionesses fought their own shootout in the Euros, the duelling Europa League sides battled deep into penalties, taking 16 shots between them. Ultimately, it was the Cypriots who held their nerve, winning the spot-kicks 5-6 to break the tie and advance through the qualifier. Highly-strung tempers promptly snapped completely at the game’s end, with no less than four red cards handed out to players, and Larnaca’s manager sent off.

The winners now progress to a second qualifying round, facing either each other or a team seeded straight into the second stage

Also ending in a penalty shootout, but with almost none of the same dramatics, was the fixture between Bulgaria’s Levski Sofia and Israeli side Hapoel Be’er Sheva. Both teams played in the shadow of accomplished legacies – Levski Sofia’s Blues are twice-quarter finalists for the Europa League, whilst the Israeli Reds hold a rap-sheet including knocking out the author’s beloved Southampton in the final tie of the 2016 Europa group stages. Yet for the first leg, seemingly little could be summoned besides sporadically vicious fouls, which landed a player apiece being sent off by the game’s end. The return leg remained similarly uninspired for the first 90 minutes, until players finally began a frenetic search for a deciding shot in extra time. Subsequent goals by both meant a 1-1 draw and the forcing of the game to penalties, where Blues’ keeper Svetoslav Vutsov finally stepped up as the hero the match needed to save two Hapoel Be’er Sheva attempts and send the Reds crashing into the Conference League.

Elsewhere, there was a lyricism-enticing faceoff between Hungary’s Paksi FC, known popularly as Atomcsapat, ‘Nuclearteam’, for their bright green shirts and nuclear-powered hometown, and the steam-powered Railwaymen of CFR Cluj, Romania, who fought to an initial 0-0 standstill in the first leg at Paksi’s Fehérvári Road. For the rematch in Cluj, the Romanians seemingly found the fire needed to win the day, slotting in a goal towards the end of the first half. Hungary’s side briefly held equalisation within their grasp after being handed a penalty, but midfielder Bálint Vécsei was denied by the CFR Cluj keeper, and even after being granted a do-over by game officials his second shot went wide. Nuclearteam thereafter entered total meltdown, with the Railwaymen netting two more goals in the final five minutes to make it 3-0 and send them on an express route to the second round.

A hat-trick by winger Cyrille Bayala helped propel Sheriff Tiraspol to victory over the Kosovar capital’s FC Prishtina in a clash between two of Europe’s more contentious states. Sheriff, a symbol of the unrecognised and Russian-backed breakaway state Transnistria, shattered the pride of widely-recognised Kosovo in an initial leg in Tiraspol, where Bayala’s consecutive strikes and a top-off by substitute Elijah Odede left Kosovo’s Clods reeling 4-0. There was a valiant attempt at a comeback the following week, even when yet another strike by the Wasps left Prishtina five down on aggregate by the second half. An opportune header six minutes later brought the Kosovars even, and a shot from 25 meters by Clod captain Leutrim Kryeziu set up a corner that Prishtina converted into a 2-1 lead in the 65th minute. Full time saw the Kosovans eliminated regardless but with some pride salvaged, while the Wasps win the reward of a second qualifier round against Utrecht.

The losers suffer the fate of consignation to the heaving mass of 155 teams fighting for qualification to the Conference League

There were similar efforts at a last-gasp revival by Slovakian side Spartak Trnava during their fixture with the Swedish BK Häcken, also called the Wasps. Slovakia’s White Angels unexpectedly lost their home leg despite dominating much of the game following a surprise Häcken goal in the second half, and further disaster beckoned in the follow-up when the Swedes slammed home a penalty only 13 minutes in to make it 2-0. Spartak rallied against the odds, however, pulling together two improbable shots after the break to level the score and push the game irresistibly to extra time. Yet an eleventh-hour heroic by striker John-Paul Dembe squeezed the Swedes to all-square on 2-2, letting them claw their way to victory on the aggregate. A post-whistle red card for a Häcken midfielder was little commiseration for the White Angels, whose first Europa League sojourn since 2019 has ended in anticlimax.

And it was a careful victory for Polish side Legia Warsaw, who bested Kazakhstan’s FC Aktobe over two 1-0 legs. The Legionaries enjoyed modest success in the Conference League last season until being slapped out the quarter finals by a laughably overqualified Chelsea FC, but there are hopes for a return to form this year for the side, who are perennial Champions League contenders. Midfielder Vahan Bichakhchyan netted Legia’s first win at home with an effort in the 25th minute, and nearly made it two-for-two in the away leg with a free kick sent firing into the Aktobe post. The Legionaries ultimately left it late to bolt-in their victory, not scoring until the 91st minute, but the result secures their passage through the round regardless. It was a disappointment for the Red and Whites, and for Kazakh fans more broadly. Having once regularly made it to the group stages, no team from the Great Steppe State has won a Europa League game since 2020.

For all these games, the winners now progress to a second qualifying round, facing either each other or a team seeded straight into the second stage – glory awaits. The losers, meanwhile, suffer the fate of consignation to the heaving mass of 155 teams fighting for qualification to the Conference League.