Euro action begins Saturday

[Neil]

European competition for four eircom League clubs comes into focus this weekend as the draw for the Champions League and UEFA Cup takes place in Geneva on Friday 21st June.

St Patrick’s Athletic go into action in their first round, first leg match in the Intertoto Cup the following day against HNK Rijeka of Croatia.

The draw for the first and second rounds of the Champions League will take place at 11 am Irish time in Geneva on Friday 21st June .

As Shelbourne are seeded, they will face one of the following ten clubs: Hibernians (Malta), Barry Town (Wales), Flora Tallinn (Estonia), Pyunk Yerevan (Armenia), Zeljesnicar Sarajevo (Bosnia), Portadown (Northern Ireland), B36 Torshavn (Faroe Islands), Dinamo Tirana (Albania), F91 Dudelange (Luxembourg) and the entry from Azerbaijan where a dispute has been ongoing between the national association and its clubs.

The first round matches will take place on the 17th and 24th of July. If Shelbourne are successful in their first round match they will play in the second round against one of fourteen seeded clubs which include such names as Sparta Prague, Boavista, Brondby IF, Sturm Graz , Maccabi Haifa and Partizan Belgrade among others.

The second round matches take place on the 31st July and 7th August. The draw for the third qualifying round takes place on July 26th (which will include Manchester United, Newcastle United, Celtic, Barcelona and Inter Milan) and matches will be played on 13/14th and 27/28th August.

The draw for the preliminary round of the UEFA Cup will also take place in Geneva on Friday 21st June at 11:30 am Irish time. Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk will be drawn in this for matches that will take place on the 15th and 29th August. The draw for the first round of the UEFA Cup will take place on Friday 30th August.

St Patrick’s Athletic go into action on Saturday 22nd June at 5:30pm Irish time against Croatian side HNK Rijeka in Rijeka.

Rijeka is the largest port on the Adriatic with a population of about 220,000. HNK Rijeka finished fifth in the Croatian League last season.

The match against St Patrick’s Athletic will be an early test for new coach Zlatko Kranjcar who joined HNK Rijeka last month having guided NK Zagreb to their first Croatian title last season. The new Croatian League season begins on 27th July.

Four of Croatia’s World Cup squad play in the Croatian League (none for HNK Rijeka). The second leg of the tie will be played in Richmond Park on Sunday 30th June at 3:30 pm.

If St Patrick’s Athletic are successful against HNK Rijeka they will play away in the first leg of the second round of the Intertoto Cup the following weekend against KAA Gent of Belgium on Saturday 6th July

soccercentral.ie

[eoinh]

pats will do well this weekend. a good chance against mid-table coatian opposition i would say.

i think shels will progress, hopefully they wont meet portadown though as football will go out the window and politics in. they have a fairly good chance of getting as easy a match you can hope to get at this level
http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/seedcl2002.html
for rovers and dundalk it all depends on the draw.
good results means more co-efficiency points and better and easier draws in the future. we have been slowly improving our standing in that "table" for a while but a good result this year should see us leaping a fair few places as a lot of the countries above us lose their best points this year.

[pete]

Get no ranking points for Toto cup summer football should see irish sides making reasonable progress in the years to come.

Now that the eL winner is at least getting a seeding in the first qualifying round its they should be expected to at least to get through top the next round at a minimum.

Teams usually tend to get hard enough Uefa cup opposition so is usually hard enough to progress unless get lucky draw.

I presume the 2nd leg of the Pats game is on saturday week?