Cliftonville -v- Kalmar FF

CLIFTONVILLE

Cliftonville will attempt to win their first European tie at their home ground when they welcome Swedish outfit, Kalmar FF, to Solitude on Thursday night.

Manager Tommy Breslin will be without defensive duo Ciaran Donaghy and Barry Holland, while Dermot McVeigh and Barry Johnston are expected to miss out because they have only arrived back from holidays this week.

The Reds warmed up for the game with a 2-1 defeat to Finn Harps in Ballybofey on Sunday and the manager is aware that his team will have to get up to speed very quickly if they are to keep the tie alive for the return leg.

“We had a decent workout at Ballybofey, but this will be entirely different. Kalmar are well into their season, they also had a break for the European Championships, so they’ll be fresh and ready to go.

“If we could prevent them from scoring at Solitude, it would give us a fighting chance next week in Sweden.”

New signings, goalkeeper Conor Devlin who was on Manchester United’s books as a sixteen year-old and defensive duo, Jamie McGovern and Marc Smyth, are all expected to be included in the squad.  

KALMAR FF

Kalmar will travel to Belfast buoyed by a confidence-boosting 3-0 victory over Syrianska FC in the Swedish top flight, a result that sees them lying in eleventh position with thirteen games played.

They qualified for Europe by virtue of finishing runners-up in the Swedish Cup but have hardly set the Allsvenskan alight this season, winning only four matches in the domestic league.

Kalmar will be without injured Zimbabwe midfielder Archford Gutu but the squad does include a couple of Brazilians and Senegal international Papa Diouf.

Nanne Bergstrand’s team will be heavily fancied to advance and he led his squad to the Swedish title as recently as 2008. He will hope to improve on their performance in the Europa League two seasons ago when they narrowly missed out on the group stages when knocked out in the third qualifying round by Levski Sofia.

Referee: Adrien Jaccottet (Switzerland)

MATCH STATS

Kalmar’s best performance in the Europa league came in the 2008/09 season when they defeated Racing Union Luxembourg and Gent in the first two qualifying rounds, only to narrowly lose out to Dutch giants Feyenoord in the final qualifying round despite winning the away tie 1-0.

Cliftonville’s only victory in the competition came when they triumphed over Croatian side, Cibalia, in Windsor Park in the 2010/11 season. They were eventually knocked out by CSKA Sofia 5-1 on aggregate.

The Reds only other victory in Europe came in the 2007/08 Intertoto Cup when they defeated FC Dinaburg by 1-0 in Latvia.

BETTING

Cliftonville 7/1 Draw 10/3 Kalmar FF 1/3

PREDICTION

Cliftonville 0-2 Kalmar FF

Cliftonville Injury News: Ciaran Donaghy, Barry Holland (injury) Dermot McVeigh, Barry Holland (doubtful due to holiday commitments)

Cliftonville Suspension News: None

Kalmar FF Injury News: Archford Gutu

Kalmar FF Suspension News: None