Maribor warmed up for Tuesday’s Champions League play off against Celtic with a 3-0 win at home to Zavrc.
Two goals in the first 20 minutes from Damjan Bohar, who equalised against Celtic, and 18-year-old Luka Zahovic gave Maribor an early cushion against opponents who had started the match in second place in the Slovenian table.
Jean-Philippe Mendy completed the scoring 15 minutes from the end to give Ante Simundza’s side the perfect boost ahead of the trip to Glasgow.
With an away goal and over 50,000 fans backing Ronny Deila’s side Celtic are favourites to go through but Maribor are experienced campaigners with Simundza looking to take the club into the group stage that he enjoyed as a player in 1999.
“We still are in the tie,” Simundza declared after the first leg. “In the first half Celtic had more of the game, but in the second half we were better, we created more chances. At the end both teams must be satisfied with the draw.
“Celtic got into situations in which we didn’t want to see them, especially with high balls into the penalty area where they always had four or five tall players. We have to work on those kind of situations before the second leg. I didn’t want to make substitutions earlier because Celtic can switch quickly to the counterattack.
“Our forwards were not on the ball enough tonight, their goalkeeper was great. We aren’t at our most clinical but we are still improving. The 1-1 scoreline gives a slight advantage to Celtic but we are always looking to score a goal, so we have to go to Glasgow to unpick their defence at least once. We are known as a team who score quite a lot of goals away from home.”
Maribor made four changes to the side that drew with Celtic for the win over Zavrc.