Round 2 of Qualifying Kicks Off

New sign­ing Lee McCul­loch scored to help Rangers FC to a 2–0 win against FK Zeta in the first leg of their UEFA Cham­pi­ons League sec­ond qual­i­fy­ing round tie at Ibrox last night. Second-half goals by David Weir and McCul­loch sal­vaged what was an oth­er­wise poor match by all reports. I’ve only caught extended high­light pack­ages of the match but to me the rust was show­ing for both sides as there was a decided lack of sharp­ness about the pass­ing and finishing.

Rangers gave the impres­sion that they were going to run away with things early on. They started the match at high temp with Kris Boyd fir­ing a shot against the post at the 9 sec­ond mark. The match set­tled into a slower pace with both sides look­ing to hit on the counter-attack. You can catch 1st half and 2nd half high­light pack­ages over on YouTube. Despite the result, Rangers will be with­out Alan Hut­ton in next Tuesday’s return in Mon­tene­gro after the full-back received two yel­low cards.

In other qual­i­fy­ing first-legs con­tested last night, Shakhtar Donetsk defeated Armen­ian cham­pi­ons FC Pyu­nik by a score of 2-nil with goals from Olek­sandr Glad­kiy and Brandão. Daniel Mobaeck’s lone goal gave Sweden’s IF Elfs­borg the edge over Debreceni VSC in a closely con­tested match.

There were a cou­ple of upset results as well. PFC Lev­ski Sofia’s bid to reach the group stage for the sec­ond straight year suf­fered a blow as they lost 1–0 away to Finnish champs Tam­pere United. It sets up a tricky home tie for Sofia as Tam­pere can come in and play a very tight defen­sive sys­tem and look to counter-attack for an away goal.

FK Sara­jevo pulled off one of the biggest results in their his­tory when they came away from KRC Genk with a 2–1 vic­tory. Sarajevo’s only pre­vi­ous trip to Bel­gium had resulted in a 6–1 defeat by RSC Ander­lect in the 1982/83 UEFA Cup. They are now on course to win two ties in a Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion for the first time since that 82–83 sea­son after a dra­matic suc­cess tonight gave them the advan­tage ahead of their home return next Wednesday.

A break­away strike in the sec­ond half by Daniel Mobaeck gave Sweden’s IF Elfs­borg the edge over Debreceni VSC in a closely con­tested first leg in Hun­gary. FC Køben­havn also moved closed to another group stage appear­ance as Mar­cus All­bäck scored the only goal of their sec­ond qual­i­fy­ing round first leg against Beitar Jerusalem FC.

There are more first-leg ties sched­uled for today and I’ll check in tomor­row with a recap of the action.