Remembering Leicester City's last European adventure

Earth was a very different place when Leicester City last took the pitch in a European competition.

Having defeated Tranmere Rovers 2-1 in the 1999-2000 Worthington Cup final, Leicester qualified for the 2000-01 UEFA Cup and was drawn alongside Red Star Belgrade in the competition's first round, meaning that the Foxes faced an intimidating trip to Serbia and Montenegro three days before the country's elections. Political tensions were high in the federation at the time, and there were fears that Red Star couldn't guarantee the safety of Leicester's players.

Eventually, after Red Star failed to provide assurances over security, the tie's second leg was moved from Belgrade to SK Rapid Wien's former home, the Gerhard Hanappi stadium in Vienna, Austria.

"This is the right decision for Leicester City and for European football," David Davies, the Football Association's then-chief executive, said. "It had become perfectly clear that in no way could a match go ahead in Belgrade over the next fortnight in anything like normal conditions."

Against a political backdrop, the tie got underway at Filbert Street, Leicester's ground prior to King Power Stadium. Once the smoke from the flares lit by Red Star's supporters cleared and the first leg could actually kick off, it took the club from Belgrade all of one minute to open the scoring as Milenko Acimovic rocketed a 35-yard shot past Tim Flowers, who was surrounded by smoke that had yet to settle. The Foxes got back on level terms just before the interval, however, with Gerry Taggart flicking a header past Aleksandar Kocic.

A 1-1 draw in the first leg left everything to play for in Vienna, and it didn't take long for Red Star's supporters to illustrate that an alternative venue wouldn't translate to a lack of violence or racial abuse.

The Telegraph's Christopher Davies painted a picture of the scenes:

Around 10,000 of the estimated 100,000 Serbs in Vienna were present and most were a disgrace.

Coaches taking the Leicester fans to the stadium were pelted with bricks and bottles. There were skirmishes in the city centre and inside the stadium Red Star fans threw and rocket-launched flares into the area where the Leicester supporters were.

A few Leicester followers were unwise to taunt the Serbian fans - chairman John Elsom pleaded with them to return to their seats - but there can be no doubt who the aggressors were.

The racial abuse directed at Andrew Impey and Ade Akinbiyi was unacceptable and it is inevitable Red Star will be punished by UEFA, who could even order the club to play their next home game behind closed doors.

Thankfully, events on the pitch were more in keeping with the sense of fair play lacking in the Red Star supporters.

The events on the pitch provided no shortage of entertainment and were made almost equally as hostile as the events off it after Slavoljub Muslin, Red Star's manager, insisted that he would never shake hands with Leicester's tactician, Peter Taylor.

Simply put, Leicester was the inferior team. After Darren Eadie squandered two chances within a five-minute span including a header that hit the post, Red Star emerged with a 3-1 victory for a 4-2 win on aggregate. It could have been worse, too, were it not for Flowers' quick reflexes, but a pair of goals from Goran Drulic and one in between from Ivan Gvozdenovic was enough for the Yugoslav club to progress to the UEFA Cup's second round.

Of course, when the 2016-17 Champions League rolls around, it's all but certain that Leicester will play more than two fixtures.

Related - Foxes in Europe: Leicester City secures first-ever Champions League berth

A top three finish in the Premier League will mean that Leicester will qualify for the Champions League's group stage and will play a minimum of six matches. Furthermore, should the Foxes conquer the top flight of English football, as is looking more and more likely with each passing day, the club will, remarkably, be seeded alongside some of Europe's largest clubs.

Luckily for Leicester and its supporters, it would take a sequence of improbable events to set up another pair of games against Red Star.