Breidablik boss Oskar Hrafn Thorvaldsson has warned a raucous Pittodrie will only fire up his side to end Aberdeen’s Euro dream, not intimidate them.
The Red Army are set to pack out Pittodrie for the third qualifying round second leg with the stadium at full operating capacity for the first time since March 2020.
The Red Shed is sold out and 13,000 tickets had been snapped up by the eve of the Euro clash.
Aberdeen hold a 3-2 advantage from the first leg but the defiant Breidablik boss insists the Red Army will not be an added advantage.
Breidablik silenced 6,015 Austria Vienna supporters in the previous round when holding them to a 1-1 draw in Austria before registering a 2-1 win in Iceland.
Thorvaldsson said: “Vienna away was a brilliant result but unfortunately we don’t get anything for that now.
“We played well in Vienna and managed to feed off the energy of the home spectators there.
“The players really used that energy to perform even better than they had before.
“In terms of what we can learn from that game when going up against, I am not going to say hostile, but the home crowd and the energy that they will provide.
“We can manage to hang onto that and use it to our advantage.
“Every game has its own life and the last round against Vienna gave us confidence we can compete with really good teams in Europe on level terms.
“Aberdeen are really strong but we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think we could win the game.”
No room for mistakes for Icelanders
Breidablik were left shell shocked in the first leg in Iceland when Aberdeen raced into a two goal lead after just 11 minutes.
They regrouped and hit back to level going into the break.
A second half goal from Christian Ramirez, the United States international striker’s second of the game, gave the Dons a 3-2 advantage in the return.
Breidablik secured a 3-1 league win away at Stjarnan on Monday leaving little time to recover before the clash with the Dons.
Thorvaldsson took his team through a training session on the Pittodrie pitch on the eve of the second leg and accepts it will take their best performance of the season to progress to the play-off round.
He said: “We can beat them definitely but having said that we have to be at our absolute best.
“We have to play and perform better than we have all season and cannot really make any mistakes.
“We really need a brilliant team performance if we are to get through but we have to believe.”
Leik lokið
Lokastaða 2-3 fyrir Aberdeen
Frábær frammistaða hjá okkar mönnum í kvöld! Mætum tvíefldir til Skotlands💚💚💚
Good game @AberdeenFC pic.twitter.com/CZZAhWKrY9
— Breiðablik FC (@BreidablikFC) August 5, 2021
Breidablik captain returns to Pittodrie
Captain Hoskuldur Gunnlaugsson, 26, will return to Pittodrie having played at the ground for Iceland U21’s in a 0-0 draw with Scotland in a European U21 Championship qualifier in 2016.
He also backed the Icelanders to be energised by the atmosphere of a large crowd.
Now an Icelandic senior international, midfielder Gunnlaugsson said: “The crowd will give us more of a boost.
“We need to just take it as a good thing as we have been playing in Iceland with some regulations with crowds.
“Obviously in Iceland we do not have as big crowds as in Scotland.
“Having a big crowd will be a positive experience and we are looking forward to it.”
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.