Brighton secured a return to European football for the first time in three years by putting four goals past Norwegian side Tromso to claim a Conference League place.<\/p>\n
After last week’s frustrating goalless first leg, the Seagulls set the tone for the evening with three first\u2011half goals from Charalampos Kostoulas, Maxim de Cuyper and Mats Wieffer.<\/p>\n
Oliver Boscagli’s strike in the 86th minute put the seal on a resounding Seagulls win, after his earlier effort had been ruled out for offside.<\/p>\n
Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler called it a “do or die” game before kick-off, and will be delighted with a second 4-0 win in the space of five days, after their Premier League opening victory over Aston Villa.<\/p>\n
Tromso were unable to replicate their disciplined first\u2011leg display and finished the night without an attempt on target.<\/p>\n
Hurzeler’s side will now play in a European competition for only the second time, having reached the Europa League last 16 in 2024.<\/p>\n
Jack Hinshelwood and Georginio Rutter were both missing from the second-leg squad after being involved against Villa.<\/p>\n
New signing Jaouen Hadjam also did not feature after completing his move from Swiss Super League champions Young Boys on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Goalscorer Wieffer made way for Pascal Struijk at half-time, who collected his first minutes for Brighton after completing a \u00a320m summer transfer from Leeds.<\/p>\n
Brighton will discover their league\u2011phase opponents when the Conference League draw is made in Monaco on Friday at 12:00 BST.<\/p>\n
There are 36 teams in the draw, including Ajax, Monaco, Copenhagen, Atalanta, Braga, Freiburg, Twente, Panathinaikos and Hearts.<\/p>\n
Those dropping down from the Europa League play-offs include Red Star Belgrade and a Trabzonspor side that features ex-Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah.<\/p>\n
It will be six matches for each side in the league phase, against six different opponents – three at home and three away.<\/p>\n
Brighton can now look forward to trying to become the fourth English side to win the Conference League, following West Ham in 2023, Chelsea in 2025 and Crystal Palace this year.<\/p>\n
The Seagulls’ next match is a trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea on Sunday (14:00 BST).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brighton secured a return to European football for the first time in three years by putting four goals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-606682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}