Last Thursday, a week saw the final round of the Europa Conference League, a competition introduced by UEFA to accommodate teams that failed to qualify for their most prestigious tournaments, the Champions League and the Europa League – or who play in a league too low at European level. pecking order to qualify for these higher level operations.

The “Conference Pub League” (as I have seen it on Mag posters) has its detractors, due to the relatively low level of performance and geographic obscurity of most of the qualifying teams.

The ‘League’ is invariably made up of a motley collection of never-before-seen teams from the farthest corners of Europe, with a sprinkling of ‘Big Boys’ who have failed to achieve the league position required to compete. qualify for one of the “real” competitions.

The biggest child of the season (by default and at our expense!) is probably Chelsea.

Welsh team New Saints and Larne Irish are two of the smaller teams taking part. Other entrants come from countries as far afield as Portugal, Kazakhstan and Iceland to Cyprus.

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

GOOD, Newcastle United we actually qualified for this at the end of the season, but then it was cruelly taken away from us. When ‘other United’ beat their noisy neighbors to win the FA Cup, it meant they took Chelsea’s place in the Europa League and therefore Todd Boehley’s billionaires nudged us to deny us our second European adventure in two seasons.

So I decided to find a suitable team in the competition to follow instead of the mighty Toon. Looking through the list of qualifiers, I was immediately drawn, for obvious reasons, to “Bruno’s magpies”. This small Gibraltarian group was in fact an advertising team founded by a group of NUFC Supporters based on “the Rock”. Unfortunately, despite a heroic performance to reach the third qualifying round, the guys were knocked out of the competition by the first big team they faced, Copenhagen FC.

Nevermind. 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 connection to the Toon. Step forward Os Conquistadors aka Vitoria Guimaraes from Portugal who I immediately nicknamed “The Brunos”.

The Brunos are a Portuguese first division team and are capable of giving a game to anyone. Regardless, with UEFA shamelessly extending all of its tournaments – mainly for financial reasons, I’m sure – and introducing a “Swiss League” format, I was assured of being able to follow the Brunos for at least 8 additional matches.

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

Founded in 1891 on the island of Djurgarden, the club’s headquarters is the Tele2 Arena. It is a 10-year-old stadium with a capacity of 30,000, located in the Johanneshov district of Stockholm. Their home games have an average gate of around 19,000. They play in Sweden’s top league, the Allsvenskan. Djurgarden has won the championship twelve times and the Svenska Cupen five times.

Little known in the UK, their most famous players from a British perspective are probably 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). Most recently, Lucas Bergvall was signed by the Spurs and appears to be a decent prospect.

Djurgarden have enjoyed a resurgence in fortunes over the past decade, notably under the joint management of Kim Bergstrand and Thomas Lagerlöf, but the wheels appear to have started rolling recently, culminating in the 2 – 0 Stockholm derby defeat at home to Hammarby. With the match delayed at one point due to fans throwing flares onto the pitch in protest, both men were subsequently sacked despite six years of relative success.

Roberth Björknesjö, who previously managed Viggbyholms IK in Division 2, has been appointed interim coach. He’s an interesting character. As well as being a top football coach, Björknesjö runs a successful food business specializing in Hungarian and Polish specialties. Despite a turnover of 39 million crowns – and a profit of 1.5 million crowns (over £100,000) in the last financial year – he suspended his business activities in order to fully concentrate on Djurgården during the duration of his mandate.

Unlike the first round proper, I wasn’t able to tune into a live stream for the match (life gets in the way of football sometimes), so I had to make do with Sporting Life’s live stream the next day.

It strangely looked like a fairly close and hard-fought match with several yellow cards each – a side event won convincingly (5 – 2) by the Brunos. The highlights of the first half were Alberto Baio hitting the post with his head in the 27th minute and two yellow cards for “bad fouls” by the Brunos compared to that of their opponents.

In the second half, my boys took the lead in the 58th minute thanks to a goal from Manu Silva. His left-footed shot from outside the arrow into the top right corner of the Djurgarden net.

However, just four minutes later, Djurgården equalized with Daniel Stensson’s left-footed shot from outside the box into the bottom right corner.

But my boys aren’t called Os Conquitadores (the Conquerors) for nothing. In the 79th minute, Nuno Santos powered a header from the center of the penalty area into the bottom left corner of Djugarden’s goal to ultimately seal a valuable away victory.

The Brunos therefore conquer once again and are now heading towards the third day this Thursday (November 7) where they will face the challenge of the Czech team from Mladá Boleslav at home.

Long live the King!