Leicester will make their Champions League debut away at Club Brugge on Wednesday having earned their place in the competition with an unlikely Premier League title win last season.
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The Premier League champion needed just five minutes to score its first goal in the competition, Marc Albrighton knocking the ball into an unguarded net thanks to Hans Vanaken’s unfortunate assist.
Monaco have started the season well and look like a pretty solid unit, winning 4-1 at Lille at the weekend after convincingly beating PSG 3-1.
“I said from the beginning that the Champions League is an experience for us”.
Manager Claudio Ranieri added: “It was an important win for us after the Liverpool defeat”.
“We have started well and it gives us confidence and now we have to stay calm and put our minds to the next match on Saturday (against Burnley)”.
There will be tougher matches to come for Leicester – their next fixture is a home tie against Group G favourites Porto on 27 September – but the romp against Brugge will have given the Foxes the self-belief that they’re good enough for the Champions League. “Maybe tomorrow people are expecting less from us because on paper they are better”.
The next opponent for the 11-time Champions League winners will be Borussia Dortmund, who dismantled Legia Warszawa 6-0 in Warsaw.
“Maybe the [Champions League] music woke up him!”
Ranieri handed a debut to Algerian club record signing Islam Slimani and also brought in another summer recruit, Luis Hernandez starting at right-back with Danny Simpson declared unfit. “Maybe he was very, very exhausted of listening to dilly ding, dilly dong, maybe he preferred the Champions League music”, said Ranieri, reverting to a classic catchphrase.
“We have to react”, he told the Leicester Mercury newspaper.
“Listen, I want us to be playing on beyond December and in the knockout stages – that’s important for us”, he said.
Leicester will go into this game as favourites, chiefly because of the poor start Brugge have endured to their league campaign and the relative strength of the domestic competition in Belgium.
The win was only Leicester’s second in six competitive games so far this season, and the second time they have kept a clean sheet.
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“It’s been 16-years since Leicester last experienced European football”. I’d usually go to my mates’ houses, normally for the big Champions League games we’d get together and just chill and enjoy it.
