Glasgow City v SK Brann | UWCL Preview
Can Glasgow City overcome SK Brann and become the first Scottish side to make it to the UWCL Group Stages as European football's biggest names start to flex opinions.
Glasgow City are just one two-legged tie away from becoming the first Scottish side to compete in the Women’s Champions League group stages. Standing in their way are Norwegian champions SK Brann, ahead of Wednesday night’s first leg (tickets available to purchase here) let’s take a look at some of the key talking points as Leanne Ross’s side look to make another little piece of Scottish football history.
Despite a first defeat of the season against Celtic City’s squad is more rounded than twelve months ago.
In last season’s competition, competing in the League Path, Glasgow City exited at the first round stage following defeat to AS Roma however, their last gasp title win in May saw them return to the Champions Path this time around where they would progress to Round Two thanks to a pair of victories in the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai in September.
In their opening game goals from Brena Lovera and Lauren Davidson sealed a hard fought semi-final victory over Irish champions Shelbourne while in the group final they would face hosts FC Gintra. A first minute Lovera goal from would set the tone for a comfortable 3-0 victory with Kenzie Weir and Davidson completing the scoring.
A return to domestic action would see the defending champions go on a seven game unbeaten run until last Thursday’s 2-1 loss away to Celtic where a late, but sweetly struck, Colette Cavanagh strike would see the home side claim victory, leaving City five points behind with nine games of a 32 game season played, “Obviously we were disappointed with that result,” said Leanne Ross, the Glasgow City Head Coach who was on hand for Tuesday’s pre-match press briefing, “but the response that I got on Sunday was great from the team. We were clear on the objectives that we had in the game and I think the players came out and really showed that hunger and desire to prove why they're at this club and why they want to start this game on Wednesday.”
That result on Sunday was a comfortable 3-0 victory over Spartans that kept Ross’ side tucked in behind Rangers and Celtic in the title race, in a game that allowed the Glasgow City boss to heavily rotate her starting line up ahead of two ties against Brann that will be fiercely contested; a long bus trip north in the league to face Aberdeen sandwiched in-between.
Outside of that defeat to Celtic the only other league points dropped this term came during a 1-1 draw away to Rangers. City goalscorer that day was Brena Lovera and the American has provided her new side with a new, more physical dimension at the focal point of the attack. After a slow start South African Linda Motlhalo has acclimatised to life in Scotland boosted by an impressive showing at this summer’s World Cup while Cori Sullivan and last season’s top goalscorer Lauren Davidson provide attacking threat out wide. The loan additions of young duo Kenzie Weir (from Everton) and Charlotte Wardlaw (from Chelsea) has also brought strength to a back line that saw Jenna Clark depart to Liverpool in the summer although a fit again Meikayla Moore has had a superb start to the campaign.
Both Maddie Fulton and Hayley Lauder (who returned to the bench on Sunday following injury) are well regarded for their vision and set piece delivery from midfield and a developing trend in the opening weeks of the season has been City’s proficiency from set pieces. Scoring 18 of their 25 domestic goals inside the penalty box with 10 of those 25 scored following a set piece, more than any other side in the league. A presence that will be tested against a strong Brann backline.
The success of Brann’s flaky season hinges on UWCL progression
Norwegian champions SK Brann may have been the lowest ranked unseeded side City could have drawn but the belief is that the tie is finely poised with Brann’s co-efficient rating indicative of a strong league as opposed to them being weak opposition.
“Scandinavian teams are strong as a whole, athletic, they play nice attacking football and like to possess the ball.” Ross and her coaching team have been able to utilise the increased analytics and video content which has spread across the women’s game to assess their opponents remotely, “We're possibly going to spend a lot of time tomorrow without the ball and we will need to defend really well to make sure that we get a good result. They're not doing great in the league at this moment in time in terms of their position but they're full of class players and we're in for a really tough game tomorrow night.”
The Norwegians currently sit fourth in the Toppserien with five games of their summer season to go, and with both the title and Champions League spots well out of reach, all of Head Coach Martin Ho’s eggs will be in a UWCL Group Stage shaped basket.
The former Manchester United assistant took charge earlier this year and while his side have underperformed domestically they have found form at an inconvenient time for City, embarking on a six game unbeaten run as well as registering a comprehensive 3-0 victory over Belgian champions Anderlecht in their own group final.
Having been burnt on multiple occasions now, I’m not going to elaborate too far as to whether Ho’s side will line up in either a 4-4-2 or 5-4-1 (although both feature regularly in the data) but goalscoring wingback Marit Bratburg Lund is a player to keep an eye on having netted nine goals this term, while an August injury to midfielder Andrine Hegerberg (sister of Lyon striker Ada) deprives Ho of one his most experienced and influential players.
The Petershill Park Effect
There is something endlessly endearing about Champions League nights at Petershill Park and it is a shame that unless a very unlikely (and costly) revamp occurs then irrespective of the outcome of City’s two-legged tie against Brann the Springburn venue’s tournament will end here.
Yes it needs a bit of TLC, visiting media are often surprised at the eyelines from the back of the stand and when the wind and rain inevitably comes it almost always batters the faces of those huddled underneath the main stand but for Glasgow City it is home, something this season in particular they have made visible for even the most casual of observers.
At a time where big football feels increasingly homogenised, where stadiums with unique character are required to transform themselves into branded identikits so organisations and commercial partners can enforce their watermark onto every square inch, Petershill’s unique charms should be celebrated.
As a neutral, the Champions League at Petershill Park has produced some of my favourite football memories none more so than City’s penalty shoot-out victory over Brøndby in 2019, a result that booked a spot in the competition quarter-finals for the second time. It’s a sentiment shared by Ross, “I've had some really special nights playing Champions League football up here so I think the fans love it. The players I have in my team that have experienced that they've been telling the less experienced players, the new players just exactly what it is going to be like tomorrow. We've had some fantastic results but that takes a great performance from the team and hopefully we can go and do that tomorrow.”
The tenure of one of the Champions League’s most unassuming homes may be coming to an end in the competition but there is no reason to believe that one more blockbuster night doesn’t await it come Wednesday evening.
As women’s football races to be elite it sometimes forgets where it’s come from.
Glasgow City and SK Brann are champions of their respective leagues however their path to the group stages seem destined to become even more treacherous as European football’s traditional superpowers become more emboldened to flex their opinion.
The current format of the Champions League, one that I don’t believe to be perfect either, was a subject of conversation ahead of Manchester United’s first leg tie against Paris Saint Germain in the League Path, a route to the group stages for sides whose nations (which include Scotland) who have more than one representative in the competition. In pre-match interviews both United manager Marc Skinner and PSG midfielder Jackie Groenen bemoaned the fact that their sides had not been gifted an easier route to the group stages.
It’s safe to say it was a pair of takes that agitated and evidence that those who lived through the growing pains that the women’s game has gone through, that the game is still going through, can quickly lose sight of where they have come from.
Skinner’s “Champions League needs to change, English teams are much better” line was particularly amusing given that of the 22 editions of the UWCL/UEFA Women’s Cup competitions to date an English side has won the competition just once (Arsenal back in 2007). His own side failed to exist as an entity in the women’s game until 2018, twenty years after an independent side in Glasgow first started to make their name.
These grumbles have frequented the international scene for months, the Nations League a potential salve to those particular bellyaches, but they are now growing ever louder in the club game; a meritocracy to be replaced by entitlement and the inevitability that tedious elitism will win out in the women’s game just as it has in the men’s.
It would be naive to expect that direction of travel to now change. Business, commercial interests and football are now eternally linked. Karen Carney’s claim on an edition of Monday Night Football that women’s football can be a billion pound industry ain’t a lie. Tapping into existing resources to aid evolution makes logical sense but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing that collective imaginings for the growth of the women’s game appear to have culminated in mimicking a men’s game that so many have become increasingly disenfranchised with.
But hey, perhaps if Manchester United and Paris Saint Germain had won their leagues in the first place (something that both Glasgow City and SK Brann managed to do amongst competition of their own) then these conversations would never have existed at all...
Glasgow City v SK Brann is a 19:35 kick off on Wednesday 11th October with tickets available via the Glasgow City website. The game will also be broadcast live on BBC Alba and the iPlayer.
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