Panathinaikos: The profile of Vikingur and Borats Banja Luka

His way Panathinaikou for the “16” of the Conference League leads over one of the Vikingur from Iceland and Boracay Banja Luka from Bosnia. The draw that will take place at 14:00 will make known the opponent of the “greens” as well as the path to the final in Wroclaw.

In the round of 16, if all goes well, Panathinaikos will face one of them Fiorentina and Rapid Viennawhile in the quarter-finals it will face the pairs APOEL or Paphos – Chelie or Omonia / Djurgarden or Lugano. Her Chelseathe big name of the Conference, the “clover” can meet her in the semi-finals, with the Londoners playing Ghent or Copenhagen / Betis or Heidenheim beforehand.

OR Vikingur finished second in the Icelandic championship that ended in October, finishing behind Breidablik. In fact, the new league won’t start until February and the playoffs (which will take place on February 13 and 20) and her duties are limited to the Reykjavik Cup and the League Cup. It was founded in 1908 and is based in Fosvogur, near Reykjavík. Team colors are red and black. In Europe, this year it used the “Kopavogur” as its headquarters, with a capacity of about 2,000 spectators, which has an artificial turf. It has won the championship seven times, most recently in 2023, as well as the Cup another five times, four of them from 2019 onwards. The coach of the team is the 51-year-old Icelander Arnar Gunlaugsson and its roster has very few foreign players.

In Europe it had never made it past the first round of any competition until 2022, when after being eliminated in the Champions League qualifiers it reached the third round of the Conference qualifiers. This year she is making the best European course in her history. They were eliminated in the first qualifying round of the Conference League by Shamrock Rovers (0–0 home and lost 2–1 away), but then eliminated Albania’s Egnatia, Estonia’s Flora Tallinn and Moldova’s Santa Coloma to enter the groups for first time. There it started with a 4-0 loss to Omonia in Cyprus, defeated Belgian Circle Bruges 3-1 and Bosnian Borat 2-0 at home, drew 0-0 with Noa in Armenia, lost at home to Swedish Djurgarden and finished 1-1 in Austria against LASK Linz.

OR Boracay Banja Luka after 17 matches in the Bosnian league, they are second with 41 points, -3 behind the leader Zrinski, with a record of 13 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses. The league is now on hiatus for the winter and will resume on February 15, while a week earlier (8/2) there are Cup games. Borács was founded in 1926, has red and blue colors and is based at Banja Luka Stadium, with a capacity of 10,000 spectators. It has won three championships, with the last one in 2024, as well as five Cups, with the most recent one in 2019. The coach of the team is the Bosnian Mladen Zizovic, while the top name of the team is the Dutch stopper Bart Myers.

In Europe before this year he had never made it past the second round in an event. In the first qualifying round of the Champions League, they eliminated the Albanian Egnatia on penalties, but were subsequently eliminated with two defeats by PAOK, 0-1 at home and 3-2 away. They moved on to the third qualifying round of the Europa League, where they eliminated Claksvik from the Faroe Islands in extra time, but in the playoffs they were eliminated on penalties by Ferencvaros of Hungary. In the Conference group, they drew 1-1 with Panathinaikos at home, beat APOEL 1-0 in Cyprus, then lost 2-0 to Vikingur in Iceland, won 2-1 against the Austrian LASK Linz in Bosnia, while finishing with a defeat 3-0 by Shamrock Rovers in Ireland and 0-0 at home with Omonia.