What you’ve already missed in the UEFA competitions this season

For most football fans, this season’s European club competitions get underway with the draw for the group stages of the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League later this week.

But while UEFA’s flagship events may end in pomp and circumstance in nine months’ time, with ticker tape ablaze and trophies flying in the air as hundreds of millions watch on TV, they will begin in a more modest setting.

This season’s Champions League tournament kicked off on July 9 in Panevazys, Lithuania’s fifth-largest city, just 38 days after Real Madrid won the 2023-24 final in London.

At the 7,000-capacity Aukstaitija Stadium, FK Panevezys beat Finland’s HJK 3-0 in a scene that could hardly have been further removed from Wembley Stadium. The joy was short-lived for the Lithuanians, who were knocked out of the Champions League at the next hurdle by Poland’s Jagiellonia Bialystok, before losing to Maccabi Tel-Aviv in the Europa League.

Below are some of the most interesting results, teams and storylines you may have missed this season, proving that there is more to European football than just the household names of the continent’s biggest clubs.

The best pub team in the world

The darlings of the first round of the Conference League were Bruno’s Magpies. The club, founded in 2013 as a pub team for drinkers in Bruno’s Bar in Gibraltar, stunned Derry City 3-2 on aggregate, won 2-0 at home and held off an Irish comeback thanks to an extra-time goal from Evan De Haro in the return.

“This is definitely my biggest win as a coach and a result that will stay with me for a long time,” Magpies coach Nathan Rooney told ESPN.

“The rate of progress at the club has been incredible. The pub team tag is a key part of the club’s foundation and gives the Magpies a unique and special story. However, I came to make a difference; not just to create a brave pub team with the occasional bit of success, but to take the club to the next level.”

The European adventure ended at the hands of FC Copenhagen, as the Magpies lost 8-1 to a team that had faced Manchester City in the knockout stages of last season’s Champions League. But the Magpies still made their presence felt, with Olatunde Bayode scoring a consolation goal at Parken, a stadium with a capacity of 38,000, slightly more than the entire population of Gibraltar.

Despite this, there is still hope that the British overseas territory on the southern coast of Spain will still have a team in the Conference League this season. Lincoln Red Imps take a 2-1 aggregate advantage into Thursday’s return leg against Larne, which they hope will deny them the chance to become the first team from Northern Ireland to reach the group stages of a European competition.

Gibraltar, however, is a sprawling metropolis compared to the town of Vikingur, another small club that punches above its weight in Europe despite being on the fringes of UEFA’s jurisdiction. The Faroese club play in the village of Norðragøta (population 640), the smallest settlement to have hosted European football this season. Vikingur defeated Liepaja of Latvia before falling to Belgian side Gent.

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Historical results for small countries

San Marino officially has the worst men’s national team in the world, having been at the bottom of the FIFA rankings since 2018.

Yet there was big news this summer in the microstate in northern Italy, where one of the clubs recorded its first-ever European victory after 13 consecutive years of participation in continental competitions.

La Fiorita came from behind to win the Conference League first qualifying round against Isloch, the club that briefly rose to prominence during the first COVID-19 lockdown when the Belarusian Premier League was one of the few competitions still being played, attracting fans from around the world.

La Fiorita recovered from a 1-0 home defeat to level the score in the away leg, played in Hungary due to sanctions against Belarus, before winning 4-2 on penalties.

“It is an honor and a privilege for us, the Sammarinese clubs, to compete with the biggest clubs in Europe, but it also requires enormous sacrifices,” Michele Della Valle, secretary general of La Fiorita, told ESPN.

“In San Marino, football is an amateur sport and most players and staff have jobs. Especially in the summer, it is difficult to combine football, work and family. When we got through the first round, we had to see who could get time off to play in the next round and not everyone could.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the next round went a step too far, as the underdogs were beaten 6-1, 4-0 by Istanbul Basaksehir. Still, Nicola Greco’s consolation goal was met with jubilant cheers and optimism for the future in Turkey.

“The level of our national league has improved, so all the Sammarinese teams are doing better in Europe,” Della Valle said. “We are at a point where getting past the first round is the least we want.”

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Andorra may have more than twice the population of San Marino (a whopping 80,000) and are 45 places above them in the FIFA rankings (164th), but clubs from the principality nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees have also traditionally been the scapegoat in Europe. But Inter Club d’Escaldes have shown in recent years that they are not to be underestimated.

They beat Scotland’s Hibernian at home in a Conference League qualifier last season and built on that success by beating Bosnia’s Velez Mostar 5-1 last month — the biggest win ever for an Andorran side in Europe. In the next round, they almost defied logic to come back from 4-0 down to lose 4-3 to AEK Athens before going down 4-0 at home.

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For some outsiders, the dream is still alive. Welsh Premier League champions The New Saints are on the verge of becoming the first Welsh team to reach the group stages of a major European competition. TNS, based in Oswestry just over the border in England, made headlines earlier this year when they were wrongly awarded a Guinness World Record for what was initially thought to be a 27-match winning streak. However, it transpired that one of those wins had come via a penalty shootout, which technically counts as a draw, and the record was revoked.

The Champions League kicked off with a win over Montenegro’s Decic, but defeats to Ferencvaros and Moldova’s Petrocub saw TNS face FK Panevezys in a battle of two teams looking to be knocked out three times in all three competitions in the same qualifying campaign. A resounding 3-0 win in Lithuania leaves TNS in a dominant position to qualify for the Conference League.

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The dramatic journey of Noah

The biggest fairytale in Europe so far this season is undoubtedly that of Noah FC. The Armenian club, founded in 2017, are the only team to have entered the Conference League in the first qualifying round and are still in the competition. They signed 16 players in the summer, but the players in the new squad seem to have clicked straight away.

Drama has followed Noah FC throughout the campaign. After a solid win over KF Shkendija of North Macedonia, they continued the style to fire seven unanswered goals against Maltese side Sliema Wanderers in the first leg of their second round match. AEK Athens awaited them in the third round and it seemed a daunting task to take on the Greek team – who only reached the knockout stages of the Europa League in 2018. However, no one expected goalkeeper Ognjen Cancarevic to score for Noah with a long shot from inside his own penalty area to score a crucial goal in a 3-1 home win. Cancarevic then conceded just one goal in the second leg to ensure Noah’s progression.

In their first playoff match, Noah took the lead after just three minutes against Slovakia’s MFK Ruzomberok, but the match was halted by a prolonged power outage that plunged the stadium into darkness. When the floodlights came back on, Noah was re-energized and won 3-0 to put them on the brink of the group stage.

If they can maintain their respective 3-0 leads in the return leg on Thursday, Noah and TNS will proudly represent Europe’s top clubs against big clubs such as Chelsea, Fiorentina and Real Betis this season.