United start season with European test

DUNDEE United will begin their 2025-26 season in earnest playing European football against UNA Strassen of Luxembourg.

A creditable fourth place finish last season, originally saw the Tangerines qualify for the Europa League, but with Aberdeen’s surprise victory in the Scottish Cup Final over Celtic, it was United who dropped down a tier and will now compete in the Europa Conference League instead.

Seeded for the second round, United will play at home first before travelling to the continent the following week. One would expect the Tangerines to come through this challenge, but as we have seen in the past Scottish sides can easily come a cropper in the Grand Duchy. Rangers famously fell to the unknown Progrès Niederkorn in 2017; in a game widely regarded as a huge upset with the Luxembourgers recording their first ever win in European competition.

UNA Strassen themselves have only ever played in Europe once before, losing 5-0 on aggregate to a side from Finland, so are relative newcomers to the scene.

Dundee United’s last European outing, too, ended in disaster losing 7-0 to Dutch side AZ Alkmaar, even though they had secured a 1-0 victory in the first leg at Tannadice, in what was to be—then—manager Jack Ross’ most famous victory before he departed a few weeks later.

Arabs will be forgiven for trying to second guess Jim Goodwin’s thoughts, tactics and preferred playing squad at present, with no fewer than 11 new signings arriving from all over Europe over the summer months.

With their absence from the group stages of the League Cup, friendly games locally at Brechin and St Johnstone have seen him field more or less two different starting 11s in each half, enabling newcomers to gel with their teammates along with some academy graduates getting a well-deserved run out with the big boys. Indeed with no squad numbers released as yet and many listed as ‘trialists’ it has had us all scratching our heads at times and playing the who’s who game. United will start the season with six loanees, with options to buy on half of them.

New arrivals include defenders Bert Esselink (Netherlands), Krisztian Keresztes (Hungary), Lurie Lovu (Moldova) and Dario Naamo (Finland). Yevhen Kucherenko (Ukraine) will be the man between the sticks this season after the departure of Jack Walton to Luton town. All of these have looked promising in pre-season, but as we have seen before adapting to the Scottish game is not always that simple. There were high hopes for David Babunski last year, who came with a great pedigree, but unfortunately after such a bright start to his Tannadice career starring in a scintillating Dundee derby it just never happened for him a Tangerine shirt. His North Macedonian counterpart, winger Krijstian Trapanowski is, however, still part of Jim Goodwin’s plans.

Last season’s Player of Year, Vicko Sevelj, will have a strong bearing on the squad, with Craig Sibbald being the only other recognised midfielder from last season’s campaign. Joining Sevelj will be his old Hadjuk Split team mate Ivan Dolcek who has been capped at U-23 level for their country (Croatia) and plays at either left back or left wing.

So it’s an all new look for Goodwin and his men who will kick off the league season with a tough test at new boys Falkirk after their well-deserved promotion from the championship. There’s a new look for the home strip, too, which has seen the club use thick black vertical stripes on their tangerine shirts for the first time—very Shakhtar Donetsk indeed.

Arabs, of course, always look for the Dundee derbies as the stand out fixtures for the season and they will not have too long to wait when United will cross the street to play the Dark Blues at the end of August. With former United player, Steven Pressley, now at the helm at Dens Park, the game of course takes on an added twist and we’d expect the usual passion and desire for one-upmanship from both sets of fans across the great divide.