Brunos marching on | OneFootball

A week past Thursday saw the latest round of the Europa Conference League, a competition introduced by UEFA to cater for teams that failed to qualify for their more prestigious tournaments, the Champions League and Europa League – or play in a league too low in the European pecking order to qualify for those higher level operations.

The “Conference Pub League” (as I’ve seen it referred to by posters on The Mag) has its detractors, due to the relatively low performance level and geographical obscurity of many of the teams which qualify.

The “League” is invariably composed of a motley collection of previously unheard of teams from the far flung corners of Europe with a sprinkling of “Big Boys” who failed to reach the league position required to qualify for one of the “proper” competitions.

This season’s biggest kid on the block (by default and at our expense!) is probably Chelsea.

The Welsh team New Saints and the Irish of Larne are two of the smallest teams taking part. Other entrants come from countries ranging from as far apart as Portugal to Kazakhstan and Iceland to Cyprus.

Why bother reporting on this “Micky Mouse” competition, you may ask?

Well, Newcastle United actually qualified for it at the end of the season but then we had it cruelly snatched from our grasp. When the “other United” beat their noisy neighbours to lift the FA Cup it meant they took Chelsea’s Europa League spot and consequently Todd Boehley’s billionaires elbowed us aside to deny us our second European adventure in two seasons.

I decided, therefore, to find a suitable team in the competition to follow in place of the mighty Toon. In running my eyes down the list of qualifiers I was immediately drawn, for obvious reasons, to “Bruno’s Magpies”. This little Gibraltarian outfit was actually a pub team founded by a bunch of NUFC supporters based on “the Rock”. Unfortunately, despite performing heroically to reach the third qualifying round, the lads were dumped out of the competition by the first big team they faced, Copenhagen FC.

Never mind. My mantra was “The King is dead – long live the King.” I simply needed a new target for my undying devotion – as long as I could discern a link to the Toon. Step forward Os Conquistadors aka Vitoria Guimaraes of Portugal who I immediately dubbed “The Brunos”.

The Brunos are a Portuguese first division team and are capable of giving anyone a game. Anyway, with UEFA shamelessly extending all of their tournaments – for money-making reasons primarily, I’m sure – and introducing a “Swiss League” format, I was guaranteed to be able to follow The Brunos for at least another 8 games.

After winning their first game of the Swiss League (beating Celje of Slovenia 3 – 1 in the Estadio Dom Afonso Henriques in Guimaraes) “Os nossos rapazes” (our boys) were in action again on a Thursday evening, 12 days ago. This time they faced the Swedish outfit of Djurgården IF in Stockholm.

Founded 1891 on the island of Djurgarden, the club’s home ground is the Tele2 Arena. This is a 10 year old stadium with a 30,000 capacity, situated in the Johanneshov district of Stockholm. Their home games have an average gate of about 19,000. They play in the top tier of the Swedish league, the Allsvenskan. Djurgarden have won the league twelve times and the Svenska Cupen five times.

Not particularly well known in the UK, probably their most famous players for a British perspective are Kim Källström ( three games while on loan at Arsenal from Dynamo Moscow in 2014) and Olof Mellberg (232 appearances for Aston Villa from 2001 to 2008). More recently, Lucas Bergvall was signed from them by Spurs and looks to be a decent prospect.

Djurgarden had been enjoying a resurgence of fortunes in the last decade, especially under the joint leadership of Kim Bergstrand and Thomas Lagerlöf, but the wheels seem to have been coming off recently, culminating in the loss of the Stockholm derby 2 – 0 at home against Hammarby. With the game delayed at one point because of fans throwing flares on to the pitch in protest, the pair were sacked in the aftermath despite six years of relative success.

Roberth Björknesjö, who previously managed Viggbyholms IK in Division 2, has been appointed as the interim coach. He is an interesting character. As well as coaching top level football, Björknesjö has been managing a successful food company specializing in Hungarian and Polish delicacies. Despite having a turnover of 39 million krona – and a profit of 1.5 million krona (over £100,000) in the last financial year – he has suspended his commercial activities so as to concentrate fully on Djurgården for the duration of his tenure.

Unlike the first round proper, I was unable to log on to a livestream for the match (life annoyingly gets in the way of football sometimes) so had to settle for Sporting Life’s live feed the next day.

It looked suspiciously like a fairly close and hard fought game with several yellow cards apiece – a side event won convincingly (5 – 2) by the Brunos. The highlights of the first half were Alberto Baio hitting the post with a header on 27 minutes and a brace of yellow cards for “bad fouls” for the Brunos compared to just the one for their opponents.

In the second half my boys took the lead on 58 minutes with a goal by Manu Silva. His left footed shot from outside the arrowing in to the top right corner of the Djurgarden net.

However, only four minutes later, Djurgården levelled things up with a Daniel Stensson left footed shot from outside the box into the bottom right corner.

My boys are not called Os Conquitadores (the Conquerors) for nothing, though. In the 79th minute Nuno Santos powered a header from the centre of the six yard box into the bottom left hand corner of the Djugarden goal to ultimately seal a valuable away victory.

So the Brunos conquer once again and now March on towards match day three this Thursday (7 November) when they will face the challenge of Czech team Mladá Boleslav at home.