Rovers back on European adventure

SHAMROCK Rovers take on Celje tonight in their first home game of the UEFA Conference League.

After qualifying with a victory against Portuguese side Santa Clara, Rovers played their first group game in the competition earlier this month when they travelled to the Czech Republic to take on Sparta Prague.

Rovers were outclassed in Prague and despite Danny Mandriou scoring an excellent goal suffered a heavy 4-1 defeat.

Since then their league form has been patchy also. They have lost their last two games in the league with Friday’s defeat against St Pats ensuring that they are at least not officially crowned yet as 2025 League of Ireland champions.

The financial prospects of their European campaign can not be overstated with the club already earning over €3 million from simply qualifying for the competition.

Along with this generous lump sum for qualifying for the tournament Rovers have the opportunity to make themselves considerably richer if they are able to produce results in the group phase.

Each win will net them €400,000 extra and even a draw would earn them a significant sum of €133,000.

Of course progression into further rounds of the competition will see them earn even more and their final placement in the table at the end of the league phase will see them collect either €200,000 or €400,000 if they are to finish within the top half of the table.

It would therefore be understandable that, with such a potentially lucrative European campaign as well as a cup final on their horizon, Rover’s focus was elsewhere.

They are familiar with their upcoming opponents having previously played and defeated them in Conference League qualifying a couple of seasons ago.

NK Celje are a Slovenian team and finished fourth in the Slovenian league last year.

This season however they are on an impressive run themselves and are currently first place in the league after 12 matches with ten wins and two draws to their name.

They actually were in the Europa League qualifying rounds earlier on in the summer before dropping down to the Conference League.

They have shown their quality in the first game of the Conference League group stages after defeating AEK Athens 3-1 with star man Franko Kovacevic scoring a hattrick.

The Croatian winger has been a revelation since signing for the Slovenian side earlier this summer.

The 26 year old is in the form of his career at the minute and has ten goals in ten games for the club and certainly is a player that Rovers will have to keep an eye out for.