Who do Linfield and Larne face in Europe?
Linfield travel to the Faroes
Linfield will be feeling good following their 2-0 win against Zalgiris after the scoreless draw in the first leg in Lithuania.They will seek to build upon that when they take on Vikingur Gota from the Faroe Islands in round three of qualifying, but their opposition have had their moments in European qualifying in the past.Vikingur won a third league title in their history in 2024 to take their place in the Champions League qualifiers, but lost out to Gilbralter's Lincoln Red Imps which saw them drop into round three of the Conference League qualifiers.Last year, they beat Latvia's FK Liepaja over two legs in qualifying before bowing out against Belgium's Gent, while their best European run occurred in the 2014/15 season when beating Latvia's FC Daugava and Norway's Tromso before falling to HNK Rijeka of Croatia.Domestically, this season has not gone to plan as they currently sit in fourth place in the Faroe Islands Premier League, 19 points behind leaders Kl Klaksvik.The first leg takes place in Torshavn on Thursday at 19:00 BST with the return leg at Windsor Park next Thursday.The winner will move into a final play-off against the loser of the Europa League tie between Shelbourne and Croatia's HNK Rijeka.
Larne welcome Portuguese opposition
Larne have twice come through on penalties in their qualifiers with the spot-kick success against Prishtina following another shootout win against FK Auda.Nathan Rooney's side now face Portugal's CD Santa Clara, with the first leg on Thursday at the Ballymena Showgrounds (20:00 BST) before the return next week.The club from Ponta Delgada - the largest city in the Azores Islands - does have the distinction of being the most westerly team to compete in European competition and first from the Azores, but they have so much more about them than geography.Following promotion from Portugal's second division in the 2023/24 season, Santa Clara enjoyed a solid campaign in the top flight last season with a fifth-place finish securing European football.They enjoyed a 3-2 aggregate win against Croatia's NK Varazdin to move into this third-round tie, coming back from a 2-1 deficit after the first leg as Vinicius Lopes and Gabriel Silva scored the goals to see them home.This is not the club's first experience of European football as they made it as far as the Conference League play-off round in 2021, only to be pipped to a place in the group stage by Serbia's Partizan.The winners of this tie will face either Shamrock Rovers or Ballkani from Kosova for a place in the group phase.
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