Women's Champions League: Glasgow City eye last 16
- Published
Being seeded for the next round should help Glasgow City reach the last 16 of the Women's Champions League for a second time, says Rachel Corsie.
The Scotland defender scored the opener as City beat hosts Twente 2-0 to win qualifying Group 8.
"From past experience, having not been seeded and having to play away second, it can be a difficult environment," the Glasgow captain told BBC Scotland.
"Knowing what we have to do at home will definitely help us."
The round of 32 is when teams from the major nations in women's football join the draw and last season the Scottish champions were edged out 2-1 on aggregate by 2003 runners-up Fortuna Hjørring of Denmark.
But Glasgow will at least hope to match their feat of two seasons ago, when they reached the last 16 for the first time, although they then suffered a 17-0 aggregate humiliation at the hands of 2010 champions Turbine Potsdam.
Apollon Limassol (Cyprus), Konak Belediyespor (Turkey), MTK Hungária (Hungary), PK-35 Vantaa (Finland), Spartak Subotica (Serbia), Unia Racibórz (Poland) and Zürich (Switzerland) were the other teams to qualify as group winners this time round.
Despite losing to Glasgow, Twente also scraped through as one of the two best runners-up, the Dutch being joined in the 5 September draw by Estonians Pärnu JK.
Unia are the only other qualifiers to be seeded in the draw, with Barcelona and PK-35, who Glasgow defeated in the last 32 two seasons ago, being among the unseeded sides.
Swedish champions Tyresö are the top-ranked non-seeds, the others being Standard Liège (Belgium), Tavagnacco (Italy), Kairat (Kazakhstan), Lillestrøm (Norway) and Thór/KA (Iceland).
Being seeded means Glasgow will avoid holders Wolsburg, last year's runners-up, Olympique Lyonnais, and Potsdam, as well as English representatives Arsenal and Birmingham City.
Corsie thinks Glasgow, Scottish champions for six years running, deserve their place among Europe's top 32 for the third year running.
"It is obviously where this club wants to be and where we think we should be and it's great to be there again," she said.
"We knew when we got the draw, it was going to be a tough one.
"We performed in the last game probably the best we have this season and it's great to see us peaking at the right time and getting the result.
"Everyone worked extremely hard to make sure we didn't concede against a team that had a lot of possession and had a lot of quality."
Although Twente are ranked lower than Glasgow, City head coach Eddie Wolecki Black believed the Scots went into the tie as underdogs.
"Most people over in Holland wrote us off and said that Twente were going to see the group through and be comfortable winners," he said.
"Even the bookmakers had them as firm favourites, so it was great for a Scottish team to go over and once again kybosh that kind of talk."
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