European football is coming back to the Racecourse! How exciting!

While the prospect of marauding around on the continent, watching Jenny Sugarman’s side evoke memories of John Neal, Eddie May and Henry V with their spectacular exploits, is an exciting one, I think we honour that past and reflect how far we have come by bringing the opposition to us.

For the oldest international football ground in the world to go from a famous old stadium crumbling down to a Champions League venue in the space of five years is a striking achievement.

Playing the games in the shadow of the towering skeleton of the new Kop will make that transition even more concrete, in all senses of the word.

We’ll be up against strong opposition, and Cardiff’s recent struggles in the competition shows the size of the task ahead of us.

We will be the outsiders, no doubt about that, but that’s merely another way in which we evoke memories of a glorious past. After all, we were outsiders against Porto, but we all know how that turned out!

The first qualifying round takes the format of a group of four, who play semi-finals and a final.

As the hosts, we’ll welcome three new visitors to The Racecourse: no teams from Latvia, Armenia or Northern Ireland have ever played Wrexham in competitive games before, although. Linfield did play some matches here when they had to fulfil home fixtures at a neutral venue.

The winner goes through to the second qualifying round, which has the same format.

That’s not all though: if you get through the second group, there’s an old fashioned two-legged tie to get you into the group stage of the Champions League proper.

Sounds gruelling, doesn’t it? Well, we’re half way through the article, so it’s time for you to take a compulsory three minute hydration break. Pop into the kitchen, drink some electrolyte-rich liquid, take some tactical advice from your cat and help yourself to a chicken balti pie if you need to load up on carbs. I’ll be back when the adverts finish.

Right, where were we? As I mentioned, Cardiff haven’t been getting results in Europe despite their domination of the Adran Premier,. When you add in the fact that we have never played in Europe to earn points towards our ranking ourselves, it means we were the lowest ranked team in the competition.

We therefore had to face one of the ten seeded teams in the semi-final of the first qualifying group and drew Armenian champions Pyunik. They’re the eighth seeds, so we’ve avoided the strongest sides on paper, although if we do win we’ll be up against either Glentoran or Riga for a place in the next round. Glentoran are the 5^th seeds, while Riga missed out on being seeded by one place.

We’re the only side in our group with no European experience. Pyunik were knocked out in the first qualifying round of the Champions League in both of the last two seasons, although they did win their semi-final last season

Glentoran are the most experienced side in our group, having already played in Europe ten times. They’ve never got out of the first qualifying round, although they have won six of their 27 matches.

In fact, they won their last European game when they won the meaningless third-place play-off, funnily enough against Pyunik.

Riga got into the final of the first round last season, which was their first in Europe.

Welsh teams have struggled in the competition in recent years. In fact, they’ve lost the last ten games they’ve played, never threatening to get out of the opening stage.

The last time a Welsh side won in Europe was in 2019, when Cardiff Met were unlucky not to get to the next round. The format was slightly different then, with the winners of a four-team group progressing: Met won two of their three games but a 2-1 defeat to Motherwell meant it was the Scottish side which went through.

We could make an impact, at least at this early stage, which would represent genuine progress for the Welsh game. We’ve already brought real quality into the club, leading to us winning two of the three domestic Welsh trophies last season.

This Summer’s business started brilliantly when we brought in Mikayla Cook, one of Cardiff’s best players last season. More players will be added by the time we face Pyunik, and hopefully we’ll be able to add another chapter to the crazy fairy tale we’re enjoying.