DUNDALK FACE INTO the most important tie in the club’s history tonight when they take to the field at the Aviva Stadium (7.45pm, live on RTÉ2 and BT Sport 3).
Or, as Uefa would prefer you to call it for reasons related to sponsorship rules the ‘Dublin Arena’.
With back-to-back Premier Division titles and as double winners in 2015, the Louth outfit have been the dominant force in the League of Ireland under Stephen Kenny.
At Tallaght Stadium earlier this month, they finally transferred that domestic success to the European stage.
A 3-0 second leg win saw off BATE Borisov in the Champions League third qualifying round — 12 months on from being knocked out of the competition by the Belarusian side.
The victory meant Dundalk hit the jackpot as they’ve secured a €7 million windfall and guaranteed qualification to the Europa League group stages at the very least.
Pitted against Legia Warsaw in the play-offs, however, the Lilywhites have their sights set on the Champions League proper.
The current Polish champions may have started their own season poorly and sit ninth in the Ekstraklasa after five matches, but they are sure to prove extremely difficult opponents.
“We’ve seen all their games,” said Kenny. “They haven’t played that many, but Legia are the Polish champions the last two years and they are double winners. They’re a formidable team.
“We’re not naive enough to suggest they won’t be tough opposition.”
Managed by former Albanian international Besnik Hasi (ex-Manchester United boss Henning Berg was in charge up until last October), they have several internationals in their ranks, including three players who lined out at Euro 2016 — Polish pair Michal Pazdan and Tomasz Jodlowiec as well as Hungarian striker Nemanja Nikolic.
Kenny has been busy cramming in all the footage he could get his hands on in recent weeks and expects his players to be full-prepared regardless of which system they deploy.
“They’ve approached different games in different ways,” he says. “They don’t have one way of playing but my team is familiar with all the ways they can possibly set up.
“Really I’m more concerned about us. It’s about getting ourselves right. We know Legia have good international players and we respect that, but we don’t suffer from an inferiority complex ourselves.
“We’ll be concentrating on our own strengths and trying to win the game.”
Captain Stephen O’Donnell added: “We’re well used to how they play and how they set up — their strengths and weaknesses. We’ve had plenty of preparation and some good training so we’ll be ready.
They’re a quality team and have internationals all over the park. They’re a big, physical side and individually they’re good players who can all handle the ball. You’re going to get that at this stage of the competition.
“They probably go into the tie as favourites but we have a lot of faith in our own ability and if we can execute a performance we should be very competitive.”
Like Legia, Dundalk don’t come into the game in the best of form, having lost two consecutive league games — to Galway United and Bray Wanderers — since the famous BATE result.
But O’Donnell isn’t worried about the slump and he maintains they didn’t actually play that poorly in the games in question.
“If the results were bad, we would be very disappointed with it,” explains the midfielder. “But if you break down the performances, I thought we passed the ball alright against Galway. We probably didn’t create enough chances with the possession we had.
“We started the game against Bray very well and we would be very disappointed with the second half performance we had.
“I don’t think it will be a dent in any of the lads’ confidence.”
On a positive note, they welcome back influential defender Brian Gartland as he has been passed fit to play after sitting out a month with a broken wrist. Ronan Finn and Patrick McEleney, meanwhile, will be given every chance to shake off groin problems.
Just last week, it was reported that Uefa is under pressure from Europe’s elite clubs to change the current format of the competition amid talk of a possible breakaway Super League involving the wealthiest sides.
Speaking at yesterday’s press conference, Kenny said his team are out to prove that the little man can still prevail against the odds.
“We’re a club that normally gets 3,000 people at our matches. I’ve been informed that we’re the club with the lowest coefficient ever to be in this round.
“If we were to progress, it would be a sensational result which would give hope to every club in Ireland and every small club in Europe.
“We’ve seen with the advent of G14 and the elite clubs trying to become wealthier, smaller clubs can be marginalised.
There is even talk at the top level to maybe exclude certain countries from the Champions League. So what we represent is that football is a meritocracy and any team can beat any other team over two legs.
“We’ve shown the ability to punch above our weight at this level and we want to show over the two legs that we can create a massive result for Ireland.
“We want to transform the landscape of football in Ireland by getting a result that will give confidence to every player in Ireland.”
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