Gunning for European KuPS

With men’s European qualification completed and the three draws for the new league phases throwing up some exciting ties for the remaining three Scottish sides, focus now turns to the women’s game and the one and only competition there – the Champions League.

Scottish champions Celtic and runners up Rangers are both in action today, with Celtic in the champions path and Rangers in the league path. If this all sounds familiar because it’s like the men’s draw… it kinda ends here.

As with the last few years in the women’s Champions League, the first round of qualifying takes place across two one-off matches, a semi-final and a final, hosted by one of the four teams involved.

For Celtic, they are in Lithuania as the champions there, Gintra, are the host club. However, Celtic may or may not face them as they’re in the other semi-final against Agarista Anenii Noi of Moldova in a game that kicks off at 4pm oor time today. By which point, Celtic will have faced KuPS of Finland in the 10am kick off.

The two winners will face off on Saturday for a place in round two. The two losers will also face off in the most meaningless fixture there is because there’s no progression beyond that match. It’s not even like a third place match at the World Cup where you at least get a medal if you win it, it’s literally play this game and go home. A glorified friendly.

This will be only the third time Celtic have played in Europe, which is mostly down to the fact that there’s no equivalent of the Europa League or Conference League as yet. I say as yet, because the plan is that from next season the women’s Champions League will follow the same Swiss-model that the men’s competition has switched to this season, but will also add an as yet unnamed second competition into the mix as well.

But we’ll get to that next year!

Celtic’s two previous European campaigns have only been in this first round, they’ve never made the second round. In 2021/22 they lost 2-1 to Levante of Spain and so ended up in the pointless playoff game where they lost 3-2 to Minsk of Belarus. In 2023/24, they beat Brondby of Denmark 1-0 to make it to the final…

But lost to Valerenga of Norway on penalties after a 2-2 draw. I can only find the “unique angle” video of this one though.

KuPS also lost in the final of the first round last season, Spartak Subotica of Serbia beating them 2-1 after they’d beaten Koge of Denmark 2-1 in the semi final. However, in 2022/23, KuPS made it through to round two but lost out 3-2 on aggregate after extra time to St Polten of Austria there.

KuPS are in the middle of their season, in second place after twelve matches, but eight points behind leaders HJK Helsinki. Mostly due to the fact that HJK are unbeaten and the only two games KuPS have lost in the league have been to HJK. They also lost to them in the cup, so looks like HJK are the team to beat in Finland this season. On Friday they beat Kuski-Uusimaa 6-0 away. There’s not footage of this one that I can find though.

Celtic have started the SWPL season well, conceding only one goal across the five games in the 5-1 win over Motherwell, winning four of their matches including a 1-0 victory over Glasgow City. The only blemish was the 0-0 draw last Friday night at home to Hibernian.

Hibs are another team that have started the season well and are currently level on points with Celtic and ahead of them on goal difference, both of them sitting two behind leaders Rangers now.

And speaking of Rangers…

They have been given an absolute nightmare of a draw. They’ll be in England to face the team hosting their mini tournament, Arsenal. Kick off is at 7.30pm, and is the second game of the day as the first one between Atlético Madrid and Rosenborg kicks off at 12pm. Again, winners face winners and losers face losers on Saturday.

This is Rangers second crack at European football, having been in the 2022/23 edition of the competition as Scottish champions. Rangers did manage to progress out of the first round by beating Ferencvaros of Hungary 3-1 and then PAOK of Greece 4-0.

However, the second round saw Rangers lose after extra time to Benfica of Portugal 5-3 on aggregate.

Arsenal, on the other hand, are regulars in this competition and have even won it under its former name, the Women’s Cup, back in 2006/07. The only English side to do so. Alex Scott, now well known on Match of the Day, scored the winning goal, and indeed only goal, at the end of the first leg with the second leg being goalless.

Arsenal are in the first round because they finished third in the English WSL last season, five points behind winners Chelsea and runners up Manchester City. According to the UEFA coefficient, Arsenal are the 7th best team in Europe right now, and are also the highest ranked team in this round. Four of the other six qualified directly for the group stage with the other two qualified directly for round two.

To put that coefficient in context, Celtic and Rangers are 74th and 75th on the same list, with Glasgow City up in 36th. Remember, there’s only one tournament you can pick up coefficient points and this is the first year in a long time that Glasgow City haven’t qualified for it.

However, it should be noted that last season Arsenal didn’t make it beyond the first round, as they lost out to Paris FC of France in the first round final on penalties, having beaten Linkoping of Sweden in the semi final.

They did make the semi finals of the whole tournament in 2022/23 though, and the quarter finals in both 2019/20 and 2021/22, so that would seem to be more of a blip than anything.

They didn’t qualify for 2020/21, but covid was as much to blame for even deciding who was eligible to even qualify since national competitions were abandoned left, right and centre.

Rangers have started the season perfectly, winning all five of their games without conceding a goal, hitting double figures in two of those and narrowly missing it in two more of them. But then that’s been against teams you’ll expect to finish in the bottom six of the SWPL, with the other game being a more reasonable scoreline of 4-0 against Partick Thistle. The most recent game though was on Sunday, where Rangers won 10-0 against Dundee United.

But no one in the SWPL is going to equate to the likes of Arsenal. The only saving grace here is that the WSL hasn’t kicked off yet, and isn’t due to kick off until 22nd September when Arsenal will host Manchester City. So if Rangers are lucky, they can catch Arsenal cold.

Hopefully both Celtic and Rangers can progress to their respective finals on Saturday. If neither of them do, I’m not doing a blog for the pointless third place games! If one or both of them do, expect that on Saturday.

Good luck to Celtic and Rangers today! Back tomorrow for the start of the men’s Nations League campaign!