football previews: Celta Vigo vs PAOK

Celta Vigo will play their first European home match in seven years when they welcome PAOK to Balaidos for Thursday’s Europa League clash.

The Spanish side lost narrowly to Stuttgart on matchday one, while the Greek visitors took a point from their league phase opener against Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Match preview

After securing a seventh-place finish last term, Celta Vigo are participating in European competition for the first time since reaching the Europa League semi-finals in 2016-17.

Celta’s return to the European stage started with a trip to Stuttgart last week, which saw Borja Iglesias score what proved to be a late consolation in a 2-1 defeat.

Iglesias scored in a fifth consecutive game in Sunday’s La Liga away clash against Elche, but once again, his goal proved to be in vain as Celta fell to another 2-1 loss, extending their winless start to the season to eight competitive games.

Having mustered just five points from their seven league matches, the Galician outfit are languishing in 17th spot and just outside the drop zone on goal difference.

After competing in three straight away games, Claudio Giraldez’s side will return home for four consecutive matches at Balaidos against PAOK, Atletico Madrid, Real Sociedad and Nice, hoping that home advantage can help them kick-start their 2025-26 campaign.

With Celta looking for inspiration, they may be able to find it in the fact that they have won three and drawn one of their previous four major European games against Greek opposition.

PAOK are making their second successive appearance in the Europa League main draw after navigating two rounds of qualifying following their drop down from the Champions League.

Razvan Lucescu’s side saw off Wolfsberger AC by a narrow scoreline, before they cruised to a 6-0 aggregate win over Rijeka in the playoff round.

However, they were unable to emerge victorious from their opening league phase game against Maccabi Tel Aviv, playing out a goalless draw on home turf to put a point on the board.

PAOK will head into matchday two on the back of an underwhelming result in Sunday’s Greek Super League clash against Asteras Tripolis, where goals from Kiril Despodov, Giannis Konstantelias and Fedor Chalov were only good enough for a 3-3 draw.

As a result, they have now gone four competitive matches without a win since beating OFI Crete 1-0 on September 14 (D3, L1).

A trip to Spain may not inspire too much confidence about their chances of victory, considering they have failed to win any of their previous seven major European matches against Spanish teams.

Celta Vigo possible starting lineup:Radu; Rodriguez, Dominguez, Alonso; Mingueza, Moriba, Beltran, Alvarez; Aspas, Zaragoza, Iglesias

PAOK possible starting lineup:Pavlenka; Kenny, Kedziora, Michailidis, Baba; Ozdoev, Meite; Despodov, Konstantelias, Zivkovic; Chalov