And we're back in Europe this week, as Club makes its way to Klagenfurt in Austria to take on Sturm Graz on Match Day 2 of the CL League Phase.
The Fixture
Some stats and figs ahead of this game:
- This will be the 363rd time Club plays in Europe, whereas Sturm Graz will be in its 154th game.
- For the 61st time, a Belgian team will meet with an Austrian competitor.
- The game is Club's 98th in the UEFA Champions League, and its 64th in the Group Stages.
- So far, Club has been in 11 UCL campaigns, whereas Sturm Graz only has four.
The two teams will be crossing swords for the very first time, making Sturm Graz the 134th unique opponent for Club, and the 5th Austrian team picking up the gauntlet against Club. In 7 previous games on Austrian turf, Club won twice, suffered four defeats and draw once.
The past six European encounters against an Austrian adversary ended in 5 wins for Club. SK Sturm Graz played four European games against Belgian competitors so far, unable to score in the last three duels, which they all lost.
Club Brugge has had three players with Austrian nationality in its rich past, and of course there was Ernst Happel, helping Club to 3 titles, 1 Cup, and 2 European Finals.
The two teams took a false start in this CL campaign. Club went down 0-3 against last season's runners-up Borussia Dortmund, Jamie Gittens (2x) and Serhou Guirassy (pen) taking care of the German goals.
In its opener against Stade Brest (Fra), SK Sturm Graz managed to cancel out Magnetti's opener through an own-goal just before half-time, but Abdallah Sima made sure the home team came out on top (2-1). Belgian defender Dimitri Lavalée conceded a second yellow, meaning he misses out on the game against his compatriots. In the table, Sturm Graz currently holds 22nd place, and Club Brugge is in 31st place (out of 36).
Sturm Graz had a great CL run back in 2001, when it topped a group with Rangers FC (Sco), Galatasaray (Tur) and AS Monaco (Fra). In that year's format a second group phase followed, in which it was set up with Valencia CF (Esp), Manchester United (Eng) and Panathinaikos (Gre), coming in third. Other striking results in Europe show two Quarter Finals: Europacup II in 1976 and UEFA Cup in 1984.
Three earlier UCL campaigns saw the team end in first (2000), third (2000) and in last place (1999). The last two seasons saw an Austrian demise in the third preliminaries: at the hands of Dynamo Kyiv (Ukr) in 2022 and one year later against PSV Eindhoven (Neth).
Not counting preliminaries, Hans Vanaken is up for a 40th UCL appearance, having not missed a single encounter with Club since 2016, so this is the 7th UCL campaign for Club's legendary midfielder. Not only has he played the most UCL games, he is also the team's top scorer with nine goals so far.
No fewer than 18 times did Club try its luck against Borussia Dortmund, the highest number of opportunities Club has ever had in a UCL game. The average in last season's campaign was just 8.6 per game.
Industrious as ever, Andreas Skov Olsen was involved in 6 out of those 18 chances for Club. We would have to go back to Charles De Ketelaere back in September 2021 against PSG to see a player at Club so involved.
