UEFA Champions League PREVIEW 25 Aug 2026: Hapoel Cling to Slim Lead as Champions League Play-offs Resume

Sabah host Hapoel Be'er Sheva at the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium in Baku on Tuesday needing to overturn the finest of margins. The first leg, played in Bucharest because of the requirement for Israeli clubs to stage home European matches at neutral venues, went to Hapoel 2-1: Veljko Simić put Sabah ahead inside six minutes, Javon East equalised for Hapoel just before half-time and Igor Zlatanović struck what proved the winner on 79 minutes. That leaves Hapoel Be'er Sheva 2-1 up on aggregate going into the second leg. It is the first-ever meeting between the two clubs, and both are still chasing a first appearance in the Champions League league phase; whichever side loses drops into the Europa League league phase instead.

Bodø/Glimt take a far more comfortable lead into their return with NEC Nijmegen at Aspmyra, having won the first leg 3-1 in the Netherlands. Sondre Brunstad Fet opened the scoring, Andreas Helmersen added a penalty and Haitam Aleesami made it three before Clement Bischoff pulled one back for NEC late on. The win was the first time any Norwegian club had won a Champions League play-off away leg in seven attempts, three of them Bodø/Glimt's own, and it leaves the Norwegian side 3-1 up on aggregate with NEC needing to score at least twice at Aspmyra to turn the tie around.

Celtic head to Linz with a three-goal cushion after beating LASK 3-0 at Celtic Park in the first leg, Benjamin Nygren opening the scoring before Camilo Durán, a summer arrival from Qarabağ, added a brace of his own. LASK arrive off the back of the best domestic season the club has had in six decades, having won last year's Austrian league and cup double under Dietmar Kuhbauer, who said afterwards: "If someone had told us this seven months ago, we would have thought they were crazy." They will need something similarly improbable to overturn a 3-0 deficit and reach the Champions League league phase for the first time; as with the other two ties, the losers drop into the Europa League league phase instead.