Bodo return to Champions League, Azerbaijan’s Sabah deny Israeli Beer-Sheva

SaveSharefacebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylinkBodo/Glimt reached the Champions League's Round of 16 in the 2025-26 season [File: Luca Bruno/AP]By Al Jazeera Staff and The Associated PressPublished On 26 Aug 202626 Aug 2026The UEFA Champions League’s feel-good story, Bodo/Glimt, are back for a second season, joined by LASK of Austria and debutants Sabah of Azerbaijan.Bodo/Glimt eased through the second leg of their qualifying playoff on Tuesday against NEC Nijmegen, and Sabah, a club formed eight years ago, denied Israeli Premier League champions Hapoel Beer-Sheva in extra time after a last-gasp goal in regulation time levelled the aggregate score.LASK seemed all but out after a half-hour on Tuesday, trailing 4-0 on aggregate to Celtic, who had taken a three-goal win from the first leg last week in Glasgow.Still, LASK had already rained scoring chances on Celtic’s goal even before falling further behind, and somehow only retrieved three goals of the deficit when the clock passed 90 minutes.Then Florian Flecker’s close-range header forced extra time, during which the Scottish champions continued to implode.A fifth unanswered goal for LASK came in the 109th minute by Samuel Adeniran, who then had a penalty saved as the score stayed 5-1 on the night and 5-4 on aggregate. Celtic drop into the second-tier Europa League.Four more playoff second-leg games on Wednesday will confirm the final entries in the 36-team main phase. The draw for those games is made on Thursday in Monaco.Bodo/Glimt’s storied series of wins in January and February against Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan makes the Norwegian fishing town team seem like Champions League veterans compared with Sabah.On Tuesday, Dutch newcomers NEC lost 3-0 as the latest visitors to the Arctic Circle suffered on the artificial turf inside Glimt’s tiny Aspmyra Stadium. The aggregate score was 6-1.Any hope of a comeback ended after three minutes when NEC goalkeeper Gonzalo Crettaz handled the ball outside his penalty area and was sent off.Sabah secure debut with late win over Hapoel Beer-ShevaSabah football club was created in September 2017 and, exactly nine years later, will debut in the Champions League’s main competition after a dramatic qualifying playoff win, joining Italy’s Como as Champions League newcomers.Sabah were just seconds from elimination against the Israeli champions, who won the first leg 2-1 last week, when substitute Tellur Mutallimov scored in the last minute of stoppage time to force extra time.Sabah’s Gabon striker Orphe Mbina then scored with a header in the 101st minute, and Joy-Lance Mickels added on in the 115th to make it 5-2 in the second leg and 6-4 on aggregate.Hapoel Beer-Sheva finished with nine players after leading 4-2 on aggregate in the 61st minute, when right-back Guy Mizrahi scored with a shot from outside the penalty area.Defender Djibril Diop and midfielder Eliel Peretz were both shown second yellow cards in extra time.No Israeli team has played in the main Champions League since November 2022, when Maccabi Haifa finished last in a group with Benfica, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus.Israeli teams participate in European competitions as the national football federation is a member of UEFA. It joined the European confederation in 1994 after its expulsion from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 1973, following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.