RRI Sports Club
Football
Florin Orban, 25.09.2024, 13:45
Romania’s football champions, FCSB, Thursday begin their autumn European season. The Bucharest team coached by Elias Charalambous (Cyprus) plays in Europa League, after 4 qualifier rounds.
They first took part in the qualifier rounds of the top-tier continental competition, the Champions’ League, defeating the San Marino champions, AC Virtus Aquaviva, 7-1 away from home and 4-0 on home turf in the first round. In the next round, they outplayed the Israeli champions Maccabi Tel-Aviv, 1-1 in Bucharest and 1-0 away from home, in Hungary. The 3rd round of the Champions’ League qualifiers saw FCSB’s first defeat, to the Czech champions, Sparta Prague, after 1-1 in Prague and 2-3 at home. This sent the Romanian side to the Europa League playoffs, in which they beat the Austrian team LASK Linz, 1-1 in Austria and 1-0 on home turf.
On Thursday, FCSB play their first match in Europa League, with a new format as of this year. In the competition’s main group stage, the Romanians will play against 8 teams, four of which will travel to Bucharest.
The first match will be against the Latvian team Riga Futbols Skolas (RFS). The Baltic team also reached the competition’s main group after having lost to Bodø/Glimt (Denmark) in the Champions League qualifiers, and in the Europa League playoffs they defeated Apoel Nicosia (Cyprus).
FCSB are next to play on home turf against Midtjylland (Denmark) on November 7, Olympiakos Piraeus, on November 28, and Manchester United on January 30, 2025. As for their away matches, the Romanian champions will take on PAOK Thessaloniki (coached by the Romanian Răzvan Lucescu) on October 3, against Glasgow Rangers on October 24, against Hoffenheim on December 12, and Qarabag (Azerbaijan) on January 23.
Worth mentioning is also that by the end of last week FCSB had managed to sell around 34,000 sets of tickets for their home matches in Europa League. According to gsp.ro, this means profits of some EUR 3.4 million for the Bucharest-based team. (AMP)
