Bradford City games in Germany, Spain and Russia remembered

For those City fans used to years of facing Guiseley, Eccleshill, Bradford (Park Avenue) and a host of northern Football League sides like Burnley, Sunderland and Hull, this pre-season fixture in Austria tomorrow evening must have raised some eyebrows.

But it is not the first time Bantams have been on their travels in pre-season, as we look back at some of their other obscure summer match-ups…

2023 – Getafe 3 City 0

To City’s credit, it makes perfect sense to fit in a game as the centrepiece to a pre-season training camp, but it can mean for a random opponent.

And whereas in Obertraun this year it means City are taking on a third-tier Austrian side hardly any of us had heard of until a few weeks ago, last season brought an unexpected marquee encounter in eastern Spain.

The Bantams had been working hard in their training camp at the Pinatar Arena in Murcia, before heading a couple of hours north to the Oliva Nova to take on La Liga side Getafe, who were warming up for their top-flight opener against the mighty Barcelona.

City were supposed to be taking on CD Eldense, a club at a more appropriate level for them, but they were embroiled in an ultimately successful scrap for promotion into the second tier, which put paid to a clash with their English visitors.

Getafe stepped in, putting out a much-stronger squad than expected, meaning City’s main challenge was to try and keep the score down.

City's players line up in front of the excitable travelling fans before the game against Getafe last summer. (Image: Thomas Gadd.)

Played in sweltering heat of nearly 40 degrees Celsius, the Bantams battled bravely and gave their superior opponents a few scares, before succumbing to a 3-0 defeat.

2017 – TV Echterdingen 1 Bradford City 4

Edin Rahic and Stefan Rupp completed their takeover of City at the end of May 2016, but with pre-season only around six weeks away, that made it too short notice to arrange any trips abroad, meaning the furthest the fans ventured was to Perthshire to see a Bantams defeat against St Johnstone.

With German ownership, it was always likely that City would be taken to the country and so it proved, with Avenue and Guiseley providing the familiar sandwich to the hugely-unusual filling of TV Echterdingen,

It was the strangest of match-ups, with the hosts playing in the seventh-tier of their domestic set up.

The small Southern German town was not used to the carnival atmosphere produced by hordes of visiting fans, nor were they used to preparing a pristine surface for their regional matches.

On a pitch with long grass more suited to last week’s Open at Royal Troon, City overcame the playing conditions and the shock of falling behind to record a 4-1 win.

Omari Patrick fires home City's third goal in the win over TV Echterdingen seven years ago. (Image: Thomas Gadd.)

The holiday was over before it had really started, and they were back at Nethermoor three weeks later.

2014 – U.C.D. 3 City 2

City spent three successive pre-seasons in Ireland, the last of which came ahead of the 2014-15 campaign.

English university sides have their own leagues, and only Team Bath have ever made much of an impression in the actual pyramid, reaching the Conference South in 2007.

Before that, in 2002, they became the first university side since 1880 to reach the FA Cup first round.

But things are different across the Irish Sea, and University College Dublin were not just some random side made up of hungover students waiting for City to give them a thrashing in July 2014.

They were elected to the League of Ireland in 1970, soon becoming the first Western team to play football in China, and turned semi-pro in 1983, allowing non-students to play.

Less than two years later they faced Everton in the Cup Winners’ Cup, remarkably only losing 1-0 on aggregate to the star-studded Toffees side that went on to win the competition.

Thirty years later, they qualified for the Europa League too, as despite being relegated, they were admitted via the UEFA Respect Fair Play ranking system.

But the League of Ireland is played during the summer months, so while UCD’s season ended with defeat to Galway in a relegation play-off on November 1, 2014, their Europa League adventure did not begin for another eight months.

It also meant City’s friendly with UCD was played in the middle of that relegation season, and it would have given the Dubliners a boost at the time, as they won a thriller 3-2.

Twenty-year-old striker Lewis Clarkson scored both of City’s goals, and there were high hopes for the youngster at the time, who had made his professional debut for the club that January in a League One defeat to Notts County.

Clarkson had also scored twice in the friendly win at Guiseley three days before the clash against UCD, and then-manager Phil Parkinson was forced to calm down the understandable excitement among the fanbase about the hot prospect.

Sadly for Clarkson, he picked up a bad injury later that summer, and was released by the Bantams just six months after his moment in the sun in Dublin.

Lewis Clarkson was forced off injured in City's friendly against Avenue at the end of July 2014 and never played for the club again. (Image: Tom Smith.)

The appearance against Notts County was sadly to be the only one of his professional career.

2000 – Zenit 1 City 0

For obvious war-related reasons, no English side is travelling to Russia at the moment, though very few will have ever done so anyway.

But the Bantams are part of that select club, as their trip to St Petersburg was their final away stop in a memorable 2000 Intertoto Cup campaign.

Instead of an early July trip down the road, City’s fans got to head out to Lithuania, watching Isaiah Rankin, Dean Windass and Robbie Blake all score in a 3-1 win at Atalantas, part of a 7-2 aggregate success.

Then it was into more familiar holiday territory, the Netherlands, Lee Mills scoring the only goal at RKC Waalwijk to round off a 3-0 aggregate win for the Bantams.

Lee Mills scored for City in the Intertoto Cup as they beat RKC Waalwijk 1-0 in the Netherlands, but Zenit were a different proposition altogether. (Image: PA.)

That put them into the semis, giving some die-hard fans a trip of a lifetime to the vast Saint Petersburg, Europe’s fourth most populous city.

A 1-0 defeat in Russia gave City hope back at Valley Parade, but with a teenage Andrey Arshavin, later of Arsenal fame, making his debut, Zenit won 3-0 to crush the Bantams’ dreams of making the final.

Those matches remain the only six games that City have ever played on the competitive European stage.