Aiming to take a step closer to booking their place in the Europa League knockout stage, Real Betis will travel to the Czech Republic on Thursday to take on Sparta Prague in the penultimate round of group fixtures.
Heading into the final two games, the Spanish outfit currently top the group but only lead second place by two points, while their hosts find themselves third and three points outside the top two.
After dropping out of Champions League qualifying at the hands of Copenhagen and coming from behind to beat Dinamo Zagreb 5-4 on aggregate in the Europa League playoff round, the Czech champions enjoyed a pleasing start to the group stage, as they hosted Aris Limassol and began with a three-point haul, scoring a 3-2 victory thanks to Ladislav Krejci's brace and a Martin Vitik goal.
The Zelezna Sparta have been unable to build on that winning start since, though, having added just one more point to their tally in the last three attempts, firstly losing 2-1 away at Thursday's opponents in Spain, despite going ahead through Veljko Birmancevic inside three minutes, before playing out a goalless stalemate at home to Rangers.
A trip to take on the latter in the reverse fixture then followed last time out on the continent, but Brian Priske's side would leave Ibrox empty-handed, with Lukas Haraslin's 77th-minute goal not enough to spark a turnaround after Danilo and Todd Cantwell had netted for the hosts in the first half, although they have bounced back impressively since, now heading into Thursday's contest on the back of 1-0 and 2-0 wins over Banik and Zlin respectively to stay two points clear at the top of the Czech top flight.
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