EL preliminary round: this week opponents RSCA in action

GAMES Anderlecht itself does not start its European campaign until the end of July. Purple-White must survive a lot of preliminary rounds and finally get into the League Phase of the Europa League. The first obstacle is the Swedish Häcken or the Slovakian Trnava. The latter club is not entirely unknown to Anderlecht. In the 2018-2019 season, purple-white experienced a solid slip against the unknown Slovaks: it lost 1-0 in the Europa League. At home, it came no further than a 0-0 draw. In a more distant past, 1972-1973, purple-white even lost twice with the smallest difference.


Swedish club BK Häcken is completely unknown to Anderlecht, though. The club was founded in Gothenburg in 1940 and has never faced Anderlecht in a European match. 

In any case, Anderlecht gets the ideal opportunity to see both clubs at work this week. The two will play against each other on Thursday, July 10, at 8:15 p.m. The first leg will take place in Trnava and will possibly already give an indication of who Anderlecht will face. On July 17 at 7 p.m. absolute clarity will follow with the second leg in Sweden.

Trnava might seem the stronger of the two on paper, but the Slovak league hasn't started yet. So the club is still in full preparation while Häcken already has 14 league matches in its legs. That has disadvantages, of course: the Swedes are struggling with quite a few injuries and also occupy only ninth place in their league.

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