TNS caught teams 'off guard' in Europe last season

BBC News

23-06-2025

New Saints manager Craig Harrison acknowledges it will be "tough" to emulate last season's European exploits but that opponents will not be underestimating the Welsh champions.Saints last season reached the Europa Conference League group stages, the first domestic Welsh club to do so.The Welsh domestic treble winners begin this season's European campaign next month against KF Shkendija of North Macedonia in the Champions League qualifiers."It's always going to be harder," Harrison said of reaching the group stages in Europe for a second successive season.
"Yes you've got a bit more belief, yes we can do it but to do it a second time I think we need not to get too carried away."To happen back-to-back would be pretty special and take some doing."We might have caught a few people off guard last year and people might have underestimated us."We knew, with that the staff and the level of detail we go to and how hard we worked, that we were going to be well prepared."Other clubs might not have been the same because it was 'little old TNS.'"But I imagine after last year whoever gets drawn against us will see what happened last year, look back at the campaign and probably think 'we need to take them a bit more serious.'"
After dropping out of last season's Champions League qualifiers, progress in the Conference League saw Saints reach the play-off.A 3-0 aggregate victory over Lithuanian side FK Panevėžys secured qualification for the group stages and created Welsh football history.Harrison's side faced Fiorentina, Djurgardens, Astana, Shamrock Rovers, Panathinaikos and Celje in the group stage – their only victory coming at home against Kazakhstan's Astana."It was a historic moment when we got through and then the first game you play in the group stage is Fiorentina away, which was pretty special," Harrison added."I think it worked out really well that we played Fiorentina away first – it gave us the opportunity to enjoy it, there was no pressure on us.
"We didn't expect anything but gave a good account of ourselves and certainly didn't embarrass ourselves, the club or Welsh football."We got down to a bit more business after that and all the games were competitive and we were in the games right until the end."We obviously won a game and possibly should have got a couple of draws against Celje and Djurgardens."But we've learnt from it and we've got pretty much the same squad and have added four or five so they're a year better off experience [wise]."Being at this football club there is pressure from everybody and there's huge expectation."Yes, we're a full-time team who have got the biggest budget and there's no getting away from that but we've got the biggest expectations as well."But in Europe that means nothing because I still imagine we're bottom three in terms of budgets throughout this competition.'So there's still a gap to close financially but we proved last year we can do that .. there's no reason why we can't do it again."