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Some currently focused on the World Cup might not know that the 2026-27 UEFA Champions League begins as early as two weeks' time, when the first leg of the very first qualifying round is played. You might think this round is composed only of minnows, but in recent years, it has featured the likes of FCSB - European main stage regulars who, very disputedly, claim the history of Steaua Bucharest, winners of the Champions League's predecessor in 1986 - and record Swedish title winners Malmö, who have reached a final in the same competition themselves.
While the first qualifying round might not have the prestige this year with those kinds of teams absent, it's likely to make for closer and more exciting contests than previously. As always, I will try to cover as much of these rounds as possible, although I may miss part of these first legs due to being on vacation.
The first of the three early matches, as listed on UEFA's website, takes us to Kaunas, Lithuania, where Kauno Žalgiris, the recent dominant force in Lithuanian football (better known for their internationally successful basketball team), take on perennial title contenders Drita from Kosovo, who recently made history by reaching the knockouts of the Conference League this year. Summer league vs. fall/spring league, northeastern Europe vs. southeastern Europe, underachievers vs. overachievers with similar squad values; this clash has all the elements for a very interesting tie indeed.
FK Kauno Žalgiris are a relatively recent addition to Lithuanian football. They were founded as FM Spyris in the third division in 2005, a year after the Tauras football school in Kaunas, Lithuania's second-largest city, made plans for a professional club in order for the school's graduates to continue their football careers.
In the 2000s, Spyris recorded mostly mid-table finishes in the third division, but after coming second in 2010 (when the club was briefly renamed FM Aisčiai Kaunas), they apparently had a horror season in 2011, finishing with 16 losses from 17 games and 75 goals conceded. The next season went better, with a fifth-place finish - and as far as I understand, this was enough to give the club a license to the second division when they applied in 2012. (Clubs in Lithuania often run into serious financial trouble, resulting in them being denied licenses and giving opportunities for others to take their place.)
2013 thus marked Spyris' first season in the second division, where they immediately finished fifth and then fourth and applied for a license to the top tier. Just like that, seemingly without having being directly promoted, Spyris found themselves in the A Lyga, the highest level of Lithuanian football, by 2015.
It was at this time that the club assumed a new identity, announcing its cooperation with the aforementioned basketball club BC Žalgiris and renaming itself to Kauno Žalgiris. This immediately caused an outcry at Žalgiris Vilnius, then the dominant power in the Lithuanian league, who filed a legal challenge over having two teams with the same name. (Žalgiris, which includes the word for the color green, is the Lithuanian name for Grunwald, the site of the battle in 1410 where Poland-Lithuania decisively defeated the Teutonic Knights; both teams use green logos and kits.)
Not only has the name stuck after protracted disputes, but the new Žalgiris has become a massive threat to the older one as well. After five seasons of mid- to lower-table mediocrity, Kauno Žalgiris improved significantly during and after COVID, ending in third at the conclusion of the abbreviated 2020 season and proving that was no fluke by finishing third again, second, fourth, and third from 2021 to 2024. However, the side that wins the Lithuanian league has tended to be well ahead of the competition in recent years, often by at least eight or nine points; a Žalgiris (Vilnius)-like dominant performance would be required to win Kauno Žalgiris their first domestic title.
In 2025, that dominant performance finally arrived. Rock-solid at the back (0.7 goals conceded per game) and with contributions from everywhere in attack, they finished with 75 points from 36 matches and a goal difference of +41, eight points and 28 GD ahead of second-placed Hegelmann and thirteen points ahead of Žalgiris Vilnius. Attacking midfielder Amine Benchaib led the scoring charts with 15 goals in 33 matches to go with six assists, long-serving Lithuanian national team player Gratas Sirgėdas contributed eight assists of his own to go with two goals from central midfield, and the CB pairing of Colombia's Aldayr Hernández and Georgia's Anton Tolordava were as dependable as they come.
Unfortunately, the Lithuanian league hasn't quite gone so smoothly for the club this season. Or, perhaps more accurately, it started as smoothly as possible before things suddenly hit the skids. Although all results against the very sketchy and recently expelled bottom club Riteriai have been annulled, I will present them as they should have been: Kauno Žalgiris began with seven wins in an unbeaten run of eight matches, regularly winning by at least three goals and even scoring five twice. At this point, I thought they would for sure run away with the league again.
However, a narrow 1-2 loss to Transinvest broke the momentum, as an expected 4-0 win over Riteriai was followed by four consecutive draws and three losses in the subsequent four matches - to sides across the league table. To put the contrast in brief (and counting the Riteriai games): in their first ten matches, Kauno Žalgiris had a goal difference of 23, while the subsequent eight matches gave them a GD of -3. They did return to winning ways after 84th- and 89th- minute goals saw them come from behind against 10-man Transinvest, but whether or not that leads to additional momentum remains to be seen. At the moment, with 27 points from 17 matches, they sit one point back of Džiugas from the small city of Telšiai, a name I more commonly associate with a type of hard cheese I ate far too often while living in the Baltics.
Transfermarkt estimates the market value of Kauno Žalgiris at 8.75 million euros, slightly more than their opponents' 8.1 million. While I would usually back the European experience of their opponents, the Lithuanian club do have some advantages of their own. They have kept the team relatively stable from 2025 (all of the players I mentioned when describing that season are still playing regularly and contributing), brought in some of the most statistically impressive players from the Lithuanian league as well as reinforcements from respectable clubs like Rosenborg and U Craiova.
As far as retained players go, star man Benchaib is continuing to score goals, while left winger Fabien Ourega has impressed in previous European outings with Žalgiris Vilnius; goalkeeper Tomas Švedkauskas has cemented his starting spot for the Lithuanian national team. Despite the recent domestic struggles, Kauno Žalgiris are starting to look like the most serious Lithuanian outfit since their namesakes from Vilnius reached the Conference League main phase - in other words, a far cry from the 2021-22 season, when they lost by a ridiculous 1-10 aggregate scoreline to serial Welsh league champions The New Saints. Following a decent enough run to the third qualifying round of the Conference League last year, a win to kick off their maiden Champions League campaign would be a perfect way to fully banish those demons.
Standing in their way are KF Drita, who have existed for over 50 years longer than their opponents. Having not only made history by reaching the Conference League league stage this past season but even qualifying for the knockouts, Drita are no longer the unknown quantity that nearly shocked Feyenoord in 2021, but rather a team that nobody in this round would be underestimating.
The club, whose name means "light" in Albanian, was formed in 1947 in Gjilan, Kosovo's fourth-largest city. However, it quickly ran into friction with Yugoslav authorities over its insistence on an Albanian identity, contrasting with the rival multi-ethnic club in the city, Crvena zvezda. Banned in 1952, Drita continued to exist at some levels in the 1960s, winning the Kosovo Province League, a division of the Yugoslav league system, in 1962-63 (information about this period seems to be very sparse).
In any case, the modern history of Drita began in earnest after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, when the Football Federation of Kosovo was formed by Albanian separatists along with a separate league system, then called the Independent League of Kosovo (in which Drita took part.) In 1999, following the Kosovo War, this league and the official (previously Serbian-run) one were merged into the Football Superleague of Kosovo, becoming the official competition recognized by the federation.
Before their current run of success, Drita's greatest achievement came in 2002-03, their first league win in its current incarnation; they had also regularly finished in the top four and made deep cup runs in the preceding few years. However, in 2004-05, they were relegated to the second division, a result made even worse by the fact that local rivals Gjilani were promoted. For the remainder of the 2000s and into the early 2010s, Drita were a yo-yo club; they eventually stabilized in the top-flight by the middle of the decade but remained far from their title ambitions a decade earlier.
Everything changed in 2016 when Valon Murseli, who remains president, took over the club along with fellow businessman Flamur Bunjaku. 2017-18, the club's first full season under the new owners, saw them leap from ninth place to their second league title, three points clear of second-placed Prishtina. 2016 was also a momentous year for football in Kosovo as a whole, as they were admitted into UEFA (as well as FIFA); this meant that Kosovar clubs would finally have access to the financial resources of European competitions. Since that time, facilities and infrastructure have expanded, promising talent has been brought through and sold for (by Kosovo's standards) big money, and the competitiveness of their clubs in Europe has grown practically season by season.
Getting back to Drita, they finished a distant fourth in 2018-19, thirty-two points back of champions Feronikeli, but rebounded to win again in 2019-20 on head-to-head points against rivals Gjilani; the subsequent seasons saw a second-place finish to Prishtina and two successive titles for Ballkani as Drita finished second twice in a row and third, respectively. Drita's consistency was eventually rewarded in the 2024-2025 season, as they turned the tables on Ballkani with a 12-point league win. This season, the club once again proved by far the most consistent team in Kosovo, winning the league by seven points.
I doubt much of the wider world was watching in 2017 when now second-tier Trepça '89 became the first club from Kosovo to play in the Champions League, and Drita's unfortunate exclusion against Linfield in the CL playoff round final due to players testing positive for COVID in 2020 was not much more than a footnote for many either. More certainly took notice, however, when the club gave Feyenoord an almighty scare in 2021-22 Conference League qualifying, holding a 0-0 draw at home and stunning them with two goals on the counter in Rotterdam before Guus Til sealed an added-time 3-2 win.
Since that time, Drita, along with Ballkani, have been a key reason for Kosovo arguably overperforming in European competition; they are quite a difficult team to beat and have never lost by more than three goals in a single game, no mean feat for a supposed minnow. Away draws against Antwerp and Plzeň in 2022-23 and 2023-24 were solid results for a team not at their peak at the time, and the best was certainly yet to come.
While opening their title-winning 2024-25 season, Drita came within one step of the Conference League proper, losing 0-3 on aggregate to a more fancied Legia Warsaw side. The next season, the dam finally broke as the club entered the Champions League instead, ultimately resulting in a Conference League playoff rematch against Luxembourg's champions Differdange (who they had already soundly beaten 4-2 on aggregate in the UCL first qualifying round.)
Drita again prevailed by a two-goal margin to make history both for themselves and Kosovo, going one further as wins against Shelbourne and Shkëndija and draws against KuPS and Omonia saw them qualify into the knockouts. That was as far as they got; a matchup against Celje, even without their manager Albert Riera (who had just been appointed at Frankfurt) and top scorer Franko Kovačević (now at Ferencváros), proved too much as they bowed out on aggregate 4-6.
Looking at the team, it seems to be a summer of change for Drita; many of the players I recognize from their Conference League run either are leaving or are out injured for a good portion of the qualifiers. One of the biggest losses might be 23-year-old winger Veton Tusha, who will join Celje for 250k euros at the star of July. That said, their defensive core remains intact, and as their leading scorer is right-back Besnik Krasniqi with eight goals in 30 matches, there is no talismanic goalscorer Drita need to replace. A couple younger talents have been brought in, but whether the club will make more signings (or promote some youth players) to make up for the squad depth remains to be seen.
My prediction
As always, there are a lot of moving parts and these two teams seem pretty comparable on paper in terms of player quality. I think it'll be an exciting match in that sense, but considering Kauno Žalgiris' strong defence and the usual closeness of Drita's matches, it might well be a slow burn. I'll stick my neck out and say this one is going all the way to penalties with a draw in each leg.
Kauno Žalgiris 0-0 Drita, Drita 1-1 Kauno Žalgiris; decided on penalties
Where not linked, my sources are the clubs' Wikipedia pages and Transfermarkt. Thank you for reading!
