Irish interest in Friday's Euro draws

With one leg played in the European ties involving Irish teams, the clubs can look forward to finding out their potential opponents on Friday when the draws for the 3rd qualifying rounds of the Champions League and the Europa League take place in UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.

The draw for the Champions League takes place first, at 11am, with the Europa League draw following at 12.30pm.

UEFA have divided all the participating teams for both draws into groups of ten teams, with five of those seeded and the other five unseeded. Each pairing will therefore see seeded and unseeded teams from the same group playing each other.

Shamrock Rovers, who hold a 1-0 advantage going into Tuesday’s Champions League return leg with Estonian champions Flora Tallinn, will be unseeded in Group 1 of the Champions Path of the draw. This means they could be paired with Denmark’s FC Kobenhavn, who reached the last 16 of last season’s competition, or previous group stage participants Maccabi Haifa (Israel) or Apoel FC (Cyprus).

In the Europa League, FAI Cup holders Sligo Rovers have been forwarded to the 3rd qualifying round. They have been placed in a tough looking Group 6, and like St Patrick’s Athletic and Bohemians, are unseeded.

This means that FA Cup runners-up, Stoke City, Sparta Prague of the Czech Republic or Scottish side Hearts could be travelling to The Showgrounds, which was given the go-ahead to stage the game from UEFA last week.

St Patrick’s Athletic, who will attempt to overturn a 2-1 deficit next Thursday against Shakhter Karagandy of Kazakhstan, are in Group 4. Among the teams they could face in the next round are Palermo of Italy, Romania’s Dinamo Bucharest or MSK Žilina of Slovakia, who featured in the group stages of the Champions League last term.

Bohemians face an uphill task when Olimpija Ljubljana of Slovenia come to Dalymount Park on Thursday with a 2-0 advantage. They winners of this tie are in Group 2, meaning they could be paired with Dutch outfit AZ Alkmaar, or Bursaspor of Turkey, amongst others.

Games will be played on the 26/27 July and 2/3 August for the Champions League and 28 July and 4 August for the Europa League.

Extratime.ie will bring you all the news from the draws as they happen.

The full list of possible opponents are:

Bohemians:
Az Alkmaar
Rudar Pijevja/Austria Wien (0-3)
Bursaspor
Zeljeznicar/ FC Sheriff (1-0)
FK Suduva/ Elfsborg (1-1)

St Patrick's Athletic:
Palermo
Dinamo Bucaresti
KR Reykjavik/MSK Zilina (3-0)
Karpaty Lviv
FC Tauras/ ADO Den Haag (2-3)

Sligo Rovers:
Sparta Praha
Stoke City
Anorthorsis Famagusta/ FC Garga (3-0)
Glentoran/Vorskla Poltava (0-2)
Hearts