Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes has pinpointed Brazilian attacker Marcos Tavares as Maribor’s dangerman ahead of tonight’s Europa League qualifier at Pittodrie.
The 32-year-old, who has scored 150 goals in 372 appearances for the Slovenian side, netted the crucial away goal as Maribor set up the meeting with the Dons with a 1-1 draw against Levski Sofia in Bulgaria.
Tavares also scored the winner when Maribor won 1-0 at Celtic Park to qualify for the Champions League for the first time two years ago.
McInnes said: “Maribor have a system of play that is very effective, they’re compact and play well on the counterattack.
“They have their captain, Tavares, playing as the link man behind their forward and then the rest of them join in.
“The thing for me that showed how good a side they are was the game in Sofia.
“They didn’t panic when they went behind, they’d got their 0-0 at home and were confident within themselves of getting the result.
“They kept cool heads, had confidence and assurance about them that they’d score.
“That showed they are a good side and they have great experience of playing in European football.
“They have lost some players and some goals have been taken out of their team but they are still very high quality.
“They don’t lose many goals and you have to look very closely to find weaknesses in their team.”
McInnes, however, does not believe overcoming Maribor is an impossible task.
The Aberdeen manager believes the Slovenians are similar in standard to Croatian side Rijeka, who the Dons defeated 5-2 on aggregate last year.
McInnes said: “They are different to Rijeka because, while they have good individual players, it’s all within a really strong team framework.
“But they are every bit as good as Rijeka, although in a different way.
“Rijeka were all about imposing themselves on you with their attacking players whereas Maribor play the game differently but have arguably better results.
“I put them on the same standard in terms of quality of player.”
The Dons would love to take a lead to Slovenia for next week’s second leg at the Ljudski Stadium but McInnes says a goalless draw would also be a decent result.
He added: “The home tie is important because although it can’t win you the game it can lose it for you.
“It can set you up to win over the two legs, so while we want to win this game it’s no disaster if we don’t.
“We just have to keep the tie alive over the two legs.
“Is it a good thing being at home first? I think you can look at it both ways because when we drew with Groningen here the assumption was we’d missed the opportunity.
“But the flip side was as soon as we scored away from home the pressure increased on them and they didn’t deal with it.
“Getting a goal away from home is massive, so we have to do our best to stop them getting one this week.”
