Sp. Braga receives Belgian leader to ‘boil’ after the Copenhagen disaster

Aafter starting the league phase with the worst defeat of the season, a 3-0 before Copenhagen at Parken Stadium, Sporting Braga is obliged to beat the Gent, not only to erase the bad image left in Denmark, but above all to ‘calm’ the environment around the Spanish team and technician Carlos Vicens.

The minhotos will receive the Belgian emblem with a record of three consecutive defeats (and four consecutive games without winning) in all competitions, something that the club has never lived with Vicens in charge and that has not happened since 2022.

For this reason, the Braga Municipal Stadium promises to be ‘boiling’ on Thursday, three days after the home outlet with Gil Vicente (2-1), who left the Vicens team in the eighth place of the I League, with only 11 points in eight days.

Gent arrives at Minho as the isolated leader of his championship, with seven wins and only a draw, but suffered a heavy disengagement last weekend, falling early in the Cup in Belgium in the tie-breaker for large penalties before Rochefort, amateur divisions.

In the first round, the Gent, which usually counts on the left side of the defense with the Portuguese James Araújo, a player formed in Benfica and who passed by Arouca and Estoril, received and won by 1-0 the AGF, current Danish champion and also future opponent of Braga in this league phase.

The edition 2026/27 features two Portuguese coaches, with Ricardo Sá Pinto, in the Cypriots of Pafos, to receive the Riga FC, this after a break in the debut in the field of Atalanta (3-1), one of the candidates to win the race this time.

Filipe Coelho, in the Romanians of Universitatea Craiova, goes to Andorra to face the Inter d’Escaldes, after the homemade tie with Getafe (1-1), in a meeting that will be historic.

inter d’Escaldes is Andorra’s first ever team to arrive at a main phase of a UEFA race and this will be the first ever such important game in the region.

The duels between Monaco and Fribourg, the finalist of the last European League, and Ajax and Atalanta appear as the ‘leader’ of the second day, in that which is pointed out as a third division of European events.

The teams in the race will compete six games in the league phase, with the first eight settling directly for the eighths of the final, while the teams ranked between the ninth and the 24th rank will play a play-off of access to the next round. The remaining teams, from 25th onwards, are eliminated from European competitions.