The King is alive and kicking! | OneFootball

I thought my update on the Brunos might give us a little break from the Marc Guehi saga.

The third qualifying round of the Europa Conference league was played on Thursday night and I was all agog the next morning to see how my newly adopted Portuguese favourites, the Brunos, aka Vitoria Guimaraes, had fared against the gnomes of FC Zurich.

I wasn’t unduly nervous because the Brunos had a resounding 3 – 0 win in the away leg. It was such a crushing victory that the report on the lémanbleu.tv website started by saying, “The return game in Guimaraes will only have the character of a friendly match after such a score.”

I don’t know who penned the report but they definitely possess a rather dry and cutting sense of humour.

They twisted the knife a bit at the end by pronouncing, “Despite a good start to the league – seven points in three games – FC Zurich did not really exist on one night when it mattered.”

Ricardo Mangas, the left back who spent his youth football years at Benfica with his mate Jao Felix, opened the scoring. This was followed on 88 minutes with an own goal courtesy of Zurich’s Argentine centre half, Mariano Gomez, and then Zurich’s fate was sealed in the 93rd minute by Nelson Oliveira, another ex Benfica player.

The return leg at Vitoria Guimaraes ended with a comfortable 2 – 0 win for the Brunos with two goals scored by players with quite memorable names. Manu netted the first, but with a name like that, I think we’d better be prepared to boo him if he ever plays at SJP. The second was scored by Cape Verde international Telmo Arcanjo – and people said he couldn’t hit a cow’s rear end with a name like that!

So Rui Borge’s boys have maintained the coach’s 100% record (played 5 won 5) since his appointment in May.

The reward for Rui’s lads looks like a much harder task – and that’s just in pronouncing their name. They have drawn Sports Club Zrinjski Mostar of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They defeated the Bulgarian team Botev Plovdiv 3 – 2 on aggregate and look a tougher prospect than the hapless FC Zurich – who by now will be back home in their day jobs, counting money and making cuckoo clocks.

Zrinjski play in the Premier League of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is one of the most successful clubs, having won the championship 8 times. Their home ground is the Stadion pod Bijelim Brijegom in Mostar and their fans, of course, are known as Ultras Mostar – what else?

The club is the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1905, but because they participated in the wartime Croatian League, they were banned in the reformed Yugoslavia. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1992 with the independence of Bosnia Herzegovina.

Mostar achieved a sort of notoriety during the Yugoslav civil war. It was besieged twice and suffered relentless shelling which completely destroyed the ancient bridge in the centre – one of the oldest and most revered in Europe.

“Our boys” play the first leg of the fourth round tie at home in the 30,000 capacity Estadio Dom Afonso Henriques in Guimaraes on Wednesday. 21 August, 5.45 kick off UK time. I’ll be glued to my Firestick and hoping the Brunos give themselves a nice cushion for the return leg.

As Jim Kerr might well have sung, the King is Alive and Kicking – Howay the Brunos!