At the Estadio Dom Afonso Henriques on Wednesday, Vitoria de Guimaraes and Celje will begin their league-phase campaigns in the Europa Conference League.
The visitors defeated the hosts in the playoff round after being eliminated from the running for Europe's top two competitions, while the hosts advanced through three rounds of qualification to reach this point.
After advancing through qualifying for a position in Europe's tertiary competition, Vitoria de Guimaraes will make their return to international action on Thursday with the goal of starting the Europa Conference League league phase with three points.
The Portuguese team joined at the same stage this season and secured a spot in the playoff round by defeating Floriana and FC Zurich 5-0 each in two-leg ties. Last year, they were eliminated in the second round of qualifying after suffering an aggregate loss to Celje.
Subsequently, Zrinjski Mostar stood in the way of Os Vimaranenses' advancement into the league phase. Manu, Nuno Santos, Nelson Oliveira, and Gustavo Silva scored goals to help Rui Borges' team win 3-0 at home and 4-0 in Bosnia.
Borges's team is now back in play after two dismal home performances. They had defeated Porto 3-0 at home after winning the Primeira Liga against Famalicao and Braga the previous two weeks, and they had only managed a point from a 1-1 tie with Casa Pia due to an own goal by Joao Goulart.
With a victory at home on Wednesday, Vitoria de Guimaraes, who have advanced through continental qualifying for the first time since the 2019–20 campaign, will attempt to make their league phase debut.
Their guests, meanwhile, will try to defeat Os Vimaranenses once more following their victory in the qualifying round last year.
The only other time these two teams faced each other was when Celje narrowly defeated Vitoria de Guimaraes in the Europa Conference League qualification second round, prevailing on penalties with an aggregate score of 4–4.
Maccabi Tel Aviv then put an end to the Slovenian team's season, but this time they made it to a major continental competition after first losing to Shamrock Rovers and Slovan Bratislava eliminated them from the Champions League and Europa League, respectively.
In order to advance to the league phase, Albert Riera's team had to win a playoff tie against Pyunik, an Armenian team. They did so by a 4-2 aggregate score, in large part because of a 4-1 victory at home courtesy of goals from Klemen Nemanic and Luka Bobicanec as well as a late brace from Armandas Kucys.
Following a disappointing 3-2 loss to Bravo on the road on Saturday, which put an end to their winning streak of three games in their defense of the Slovenian PrvaLiga title and dropped them to sixth place after ten games, Celje will look to repeat their triumph in Portugal from the previous season to begin the league phase with three points.
