Os Conquistadores conquer again – Long live the kings! | OneFootball

Wednesday night saw the latest stage in the European progress of my newly adopted “Geordie” team, the Brunos, aka Vitoria Guimaraes.

When I latched on to Os Conquistadores (The Conquerors), after the sad but inevitable demise of Bruno’s Magpies of Malta, I didn’t realise what a good pick I’d made at the time.

“Os nossos rapazes” had won all six qualifiers without conceding and scoring 17 during their qualifying campaign.

Wednesday night saw the first match of the Europa Conference League proper. This is an expanded competition which, frankly, has become so complicated as to be almost incomprehensible. I doubt the average fan could keep up with it all without the aid of the latest smart phone!

Anyway, this stage involves each team playing eight different opponents with four games at home and four away in all corners of the European continent.

The Brunos’ opener was at home against the Slovenian giants, Nogometni klub Celje, who showed them the exit in the second round of qualifying last year, after a penalty shootout following a 4-4 aggregate draw.

As the game was on TNT Sports I was quite excited to be able to watch the boys in action, rather than following a delayed action “live feed”.

The home of the Brunos is Estadio Dom Afonso Henriques, a 30,000 seater stadium built in 1965 as the Vitoria Guimaraes municipal stadium then expanded in 1991 and again in 2004. It is named after the first king of Portugal who was a resident of the town. My first impression was that it looked like a municipal, multi-purpose stadium. It seemed neat, tidy and… empty!

The commentator said there were 10,000 in the stadium but most of them must have been in the two stands we couldn’t see.

The main group of interest that we could see was a little gang of “ultras” in pack-a-macs standing opposite the halfway line. To be fair, although I couldn’t see their core support, they were there at one end of the ground making an impressive amount of noise throughout the game.

Once the game got underway it quickly became apparent that Celje were being outclassed and put under the cosh. They played some neat possession football but invariably gave it away before reaching the opposition penalty area.

The inevitable first goal for the Brunos came on seven minutes. Kaio César’s left footed shot from a difficult angle saved but Samu followed up with a left footed shot from the centre of the box into the bottom left corner

Despite being well on top, it took Os Branquinhos (The little whites) almost another half hour to score the second goal. The excellent Bruno Gaspar marauding down the right wing put in a quick low cross which was nicely turned in by Silva Cunha (Gustavo Silva).

At the start of the second half Celje showed a bit more intent and Seslar stung the keeper’s fingers with a drive from the edge of the box. However, normal service was resumed afterwards with Gaspar creating havoc down the left wing.

The game was effectively put to bed on 61 minutes. A swift break put the Brunos four on two and Tiago Silva (not THAT one – although he looks like he could be his dad or his uncle!) crashing in a loose ball after some last ditch tackling by the Celje defenders. A fitting reward for an excellent game by him.

Celje continued to be outclassed but, credit to them, never dropped their heads. They had numerous spells of very neat possession play but invariably ended up with an interception or loss of control, due to having to play at a speed beyond their abilities. Having said that, they did eventually receive some reward for their defiance.

In the 91st minute they bagged a consolation goal. An excellent break on the right finished smartly by Matko, who slipped nicely by the defender in the corner of the 18 yard box and hammered an excellent shot into the far corner of the goal, giving Varela no chance.

Final score Brunos 3 Celje 1. Job done and on to the next match – away to Djurgårdens IF Fotboll of Stockholm, Sweden, who are currently 2nd in the Allsvenskan (24 October, 18.45)

So, Os Conquistadores conquer again. Long live the kings!