What do we know about our Champions League opponents?
History will be made on July 30th when our Senior Women’s team take to the pitch at the Athlone Town Stadium for their first ever UEFA Women’s Champion League game. Our opponents on that day will be Cardiff City FC Women and this will be their third consecutive Champions League appearance.
Cardiff City FC Women are from Wales(obviously) and play in the Adran Premier league, the top tier in Welsh Women’s football, and play their home games at the Cardiff International Sports Stadium. Over the last few years, they have dominated Welsh football as they achieved a league and cup double in the 22-23 season and followed this up in the 23-24 season by winning the league, Welsh Cup and Adran Trophy. In the 24-25 season, which is just finished, they achieved another double by winning the Adran Premier and the Welsh Cup.
While their form in the Ardan Premier is excellent their form in Europe is less so. They first qualified for European competition in 2013-14 and lost all three of their games to finish 4th in the group. They next qualified in 23-24 and again finished 4th in their group when they lost 2-0 to Gintra from Lithuania and more notably lost 3-0 to our favourite Dublin team, Shelbourne FC!! Unfortunately for Cardiff their 24-25 exploits in Europe were to continue in the same vein as they again finished 4th in their group. This time they lost 7-0 to Twente from the Netherlands and 2-0 to FK Ljuboten from North Macedonia.
Should we win this game with Cardiff FC Women we will progress to the Final of Group 5 where we will face ŽNK Agram from Croatia.
ŽNK Agram are from Zagreb and play in the Croation First Division where they topped the table in the 24-25 season and their striker, Jasna Đoković who also plays for the Montenegro Women’s National team, scored 38 goals over the course of the season.