It’s already been a great week in Europe for Celtic following the men winning 5-1 in their first Champions League group stage match against Slovan Bratislava, but now it’s the turn of the women’s team to try and make that even better in their Champions League qualifying round two tie against Vorskla Poltava of Ukraine.
They’ve already won a watch with how this two-legged tie will take place. Not only were Vorskla the lowest ranked of the seven seeded teams, Celtic being unseeded in the round two draw, but they won’t even have to go anywhere to play them!
Given the Ukrainians can’t play European games at home, usually the option is for their home games to take place in another country. What isn’t quite so typical is that the other country is the one where the team they’re facing comes from! Let alone just playing both legs in the same stadium! But here we are, both legs will take place in Airdrie at the Albert Bartlett stadium (or New Broomfield or the Shyberry Excelsior if you’re old enough to remember when it was first built), with the first leg today at 12pm and the second leg coming on Thursday evening at 7.15pm.
Vorskla have already come through two matches hosted by another team though. In round one of qualifying, they were in Hungary and beat SFK Riga of Latvia 5-0 in their semi final before beating the hosts Ferencvaros 2-0 in the final. Can’t find any footage of these matches though, unfortunately.
Likewise, Celtic beat their first qualifying round hosts Gintra of Lithuania 2-0 in the final…
… having seen off KuPS of Finland 3-1 after extra time in the semi final.
This is the furthest Celtic have reached in this competition, having been knocked out by Levante of Spain in the semi final of round one in 2021/22 and by Valerenga of Norway in the final of round one in 2023/24.
Vorskla on the other hand were knocked out at this same stage in the last two seasons: by Vllaznia of Albania 3-2 on aggregate in 2022/23…
… and by Roma of Italy 9-1 on aggregate in 2023/24.
Their only other time in European competition was in the 2017/18 qualifying group, where they finished third in the group behind Olimpia Cluj of Romania and our very own Hibernian. The match played out in Romania finished 1-1, Lucy Hope (then Lucy Graham) getting a late equaliser after Yana Malakhova had scored just before half time.
To be fair, Lucy wasn’t the only one going by a different name then as you might have noticed from the video. Vorskla Poltava were previously known as Zhytlobud-2 Kharkiv back then. Yes, those are two different places, Poltava is not Kharkiv.
Vorskla Poltava are currently second in the Ukrainian Women’s Premier League, having won all four of their matches so far without conceding a goal, three points behind Metalist 1925 who have won all five of their matches so far (but have conceded one goal). Vorskla haven’t played since beating Ferencvaros due to their European commitments.
Celtic are currently top of the Scottish Women’s Premier League after seven games, one point ahead of Rangers who have played a game less than them and also a point ahead of third placed Hearts and fourth placed Glasgow City who have played the same number of games. On Sunday they were fourth behind these three when they won 3-0 away to Partick Thistle…
But the SWPL got Celtic to play Montrose on Thursday since they’d be busy this weekend. And you think the men’s teams get little help ahead of big European games! Anyway, Celtic won the game 4-2 to go top of the league.
With the other SWPL fixtures taking place today, and that including Hearts v Rangers as well as Glasgow City v Hibernian, don’t expect Celtic to stay top. Although they will have a game in hand over everyone other than Rangers – that game in hand being next month’s derby match between the two teams who were in Champions League qualifying round one.
After this game today comes the second leg on Thursday, there’s no games for either team in between.
Good luck today Celtic!
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