Liverpool get Besiktas, who gave Tottenham and Arsenal a hard time, Tottenham will find it difficult against Fiorentina, Everton will take a tie with Young Boys and you will hear a lot about the Lisbon Lions when Celtic play Inter. The ties will be played over February 19 and 26 but, for now, the fun is over. Thanks for reading. Bye.
Celtic v Inter
Tottenham v Fiorentina
Liverpool v Besiktas
PSV v Zenit
Roma v Feyernoord
Villarreal v FC Salzburg
Guingamp v Dynamo Kiev
Trabzonspor v Napoli
Dnipro v Olympiakos
Anderlecht v Dynamo Moscow
Aalborg v Club Brugge
Ajax v Legia Warsaw
Wolsfburg v Sporting Lisbon
Sevilla v Borussia Monchedgladbach
Torino v Athletic Bilbao
Young Boys v Everton
The teams from Russia and Ukraine cannot be drawn together.
Jerzy Dudek is doing the draw. He still has his beard. LET’S HOPE HE DOESN’T DROP ANY OF THE BALLS.
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Liverpool, of course, could get Napoli. And they’re managed by?
Liverpool, Celtic and Tottenham are not seeded. Everton are.
The Europa League round of 32 draw is about to take place.
Whoops. That was the 1993 Uefa Cup final between Juventus and Dortmund through. Here’s the 1997 final.
By the way, the Europa League draw is at 12pm. The excitement never ends!
Here’s a poll. You like polls.
Another one that catches the eye is Juventus v Borussia Dortmund, the final in 1997.
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As for Manchester City, their reward for beating Roma last week is to face Barcelona again, just as they did at this stage last year. They were beaten 4-1 on aggregate then and the damage was done in the first club, when Martin Demichelis’s red card for bringing down Leo Messi when he was through on goal early in the second half allowed Barcelona to take control and win 2-0. What was slightly disappointing about City’s performance, though, was their caution at home and perhaps they will try a different approach in February. They’ll need Sergio Aguero to be fit and firing and if - if - he is, then he can do some damage to that Barcelona defence. Barca aren’t quite what they were - but they do have Messi, Neymar and Suarez.
David Barnard, Chelsea’s club secretary, speaks. He looks exactly like Arsenal’s club secretary. Do all club secretaries look the same? “Both teams have got totally different teams to last year,” he says. “We’ve got an advantage being away first.”
Arsenal’s club secretary, David Miles, speaks. “As the draw progressed it was evident that a lot of big teams had gone. We’re delighted to be here. We’re looking forward to being at the top table of Eueropean football. We’re not taking anything for granted. Monaco have earned the right to be here, the same as we have. It’s the first time we’ve played Monaco in a competitive match. It would be fantastic [to win], the fans have high expectations for us and it would be great to get through this round of 16 and then press on.”
As for Chelsea, they would have hoped for an easier draw, but they did beat PSG last season and have the second leg at home. And this time, they have Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa, who will relish locking horns with David Luiz. It was tight last season but Jose Mourinho excels in these situations; can the same be said of Laurent Blanc?
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So it’s tough draws for Manchester City and Chelsea but a favourable one for Arsenal, for whom it’s as good as it was ever going to get. They’ll be favourites against Monaco and what a boost for Arsene Wenger, who must have been dreading the thought of another match against Bayern Munich. They’ve avoided one of the big guns and Wenger goes back to one of his former clubs - he managed Monaco for seven years.
Basel v Porto
Arsenal v Monaco
Shakhtar Donetsk v Bayern Munich
Schalke v Real Madrid
Juventus v Borussia Dortmund
Bayer Leverkusen v Atletico Madrid
Manchester City v Barcelona
Paris Saint-Germain v Chelsea
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Gianni Infantino is on the stage and he’s talking to Karl-Heniz Riedle, the two-goal hero for Dortmund in the 1997 final.
It’s gone 11am and the draw hasn’t started.
Nick Collins has asked Gianni how the draw works. “It is actually quite simple,” he says. Hold on, I’m going to fetch my abacus.
Gianni is on my screen! “This is a very exciting day, the real heat of the competition starts to be felt. A hot spring awaits for football fans.” He’s brilliant.
If you want to relive the draw for the group stage, this is for you, you weirdo.
“You mention the super clubs buying up all the talent and destroying the competition by making it predictable,” says Neil Connolly. “I still find it incredible that a continent of 500 million people, generally football-obsessed, can only produce eight (or six or four depending on your definition) viable winners. Is this a permanent situation or just a temporary blip before we return to a wider competition like in the past? Anyhow, here’s hoping for some upsets.”
Well one argument made against my argument was Atletico Madrid’s story last season. But it’s worth pointing out that were the exception rather than the norm, built up over a number of years by an inspirational manager, and even they didn’t end up winning it. They should go far again this year but, mostly, would anyone be surprised if the last four is Barcelona, Bayern, Chelsea and Real, just as it was in 2012? Borussia Dortmund and Atletico are the only clubs who have broken up that quartet in the past three seasons and it is striking that they are seen as miracle stories, two huge clubs forced to battle against the odds.
There is a chance the last 16 could be different this year. The second-placed teams were markedly weaker last season and a lot of those ties looked like mismatches from the start. This year, the hope is that Arsenal, City, PSG, Juventus and Shakhtar - hey, maybe even Basel and Leverkusen - will not be pushovers. I’m not holding out much hope for Schalke, mind you.
Paul’s right, this person definitely has too much time on their hands.
Whoever made this Champions League draw odds-ometer has way too much time on their hands. It is impressive though: pic.twitter.com/rhOtbx7uyQ
— Paul Campbell (@campbellwpaul) December 11, 2014
I’m ploughing through previous draws. In 2005-06, one second-placed team went through, Benfica knocking out Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool, who were the defending champions. In 2004-05, three teams went through (one was Liverpool; we know what happened next). Two went through in 2003-04, one of them Jose Mourinho’s Porto. Then we get to 2002-03 and a time when Uefa thought it was a good idea to have two group stages. Blimey, what a time that was. What were they thinking?
So what hope do you have if you’re a second-placed team? Here are some thoughts from me on the Champions League blog the other day:
Is there hope for the second-placed teams?
Congratulations are in order to all the teams who have qualified for the knockout stages but the celebrations of the ones who finished second may be cut short if any of them are masochistic enough to recall the brutal nature of last season’s round of 16, when eight mostly drama-free ties made a mockery of the idea of the Champions League as a tournament that permits the underdog to have its day. To recap, the aggregate score was 38-13 in favour of the group winners and the only contest that resembled a fair fight was when Olympiakos went toe-to-toe with Manchester United, which may have had something to do with the identity of the English side’s manager. Even then, despite losing the first leg 2-0 in Greece, United still progressed thanks to Robin van Persie’s hat-trick at Old Trafford, briefly giving David Moyes some welcome respite.
Galatasaray also held Chelsea to a 1-1 draw in Turkey before losing a tepid second leg 2-0 at Stamford Bridge but otherwise each tie was effectively over as a spectacle after the first legs, as the first-placed sides twisted the knife in ruthless fashion. The most one-sided matches saw Real Madrid win 6-1 at Schalke,Borussia Dortmund win 4-2 at Zenit St Petersburg and Paris Saint-Germain thump Bayer Leverkusen 4-0 in Germany, while the limitations of Arsenal and Manchester City were exposed in respective 2-0 defeats by Bayern Munich andBarcelona, both of whom took advantage of their opponents having men sent off. At least Milan had some hope after only losing 1-0 to Atlético Madrid at San Siro – until the second leg 4-1 in Spain, that is.
Those results suggested that the gap in class is widening, even within Europe’s premier competition, and there was not much encouragement at the same stage two seasons ago. Two second-placed sides made it past the last-16 but one of them was Madrid, who beat United, and that was only because they had found themselves in the same group as Dortmund, who were beaten in the final by Bayern.
For Uefa, it should be a concern that its product was marked by such a lack of competitiveness last season that we might as well have just skipped straight through to the quarter-finals, but the growing trend of superclubs who hoover up the world’s best players means that teams who are merely very good are at risk of feeling like also-rans when they come up against the elite.
The hope is that it will be more open this season and there is a stronger look to some of the second-placed sides and, indeed, a weaker look to some of the winners. PSG, Juventus, Arsenal, City and perhaps Shakhtar Donetsk would fancy themselves on their day if they were drawn against Monaco or Porto, for instance.
While it is true that many people will not want to be deprived of seeing names taking each other on at the business end of the competition, the same old faces can become a little boring to look at year after year. It never hurts to keep things fresh by having a few upsets along the way.
Last season, every second-placed team was knocked out in the last 16 and only one game, Manchester United v Olympiakos, wasn’t effectively over in the first leg. It was a little better the year before, when Galatasaray and Real Madrid finished second in their respective groups but reached the quarter-finals, Milan and Marseille managed it in 2011-12, Inter knocked Bayern out on away goals in 2010-11, four second-placed teams went through in 2009-10, three went through in 2008-09 and five went through in 2007-08.
It falls back down in 2006-07, only two second-placed teams going through, but three of those teams were Barcelona, Madrid and Inter, who lost to Liverpool, Bayern and Valencia respectively. What does it all mean? Was it a more equal competition back in the day? Was there a more even spread of talent across Europe? Let me know what you think.
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Preamble
First they have the FA Cup draw on a Monday and now it’s the Champions League draw too. Honestly, what is the world coming to? There are some serious questions to answer but I suppose we can leave them for the time being; this is, after all, one of the biggest days in Gianni Infantino’s year, essentially the reason he gets up in the morning, and we wouldn’t want to ruin it. You work that stage, Gianni! You get them to shake those balls! This is your time!
But it can’t all be about Gianni. It’s about the teams in the draw too. Here are the group winners: Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea, Monaco, Porto, Real Madrid. And here are the second-placed teams: Arsenal, Basel, Bayer Leverkusen, Juventus, Manchester City, PSG, Schalke, Shakhtar Donetsk.
Look at that. Three Premier League teams. Yes! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssss! YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!! What a league. Here’s who they can draw.
Man City, who finished second, could draw Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid, Monaco, Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona or Porto
Arsenal, who finished second, could draw Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid, Monaco, Bayern Munich, Porto or Barcelona
Chelsea, who won their group, could draw Juventus, Basel, Bayer Leverkusen, Shakhtar Donetsk or Paris St-Germain.
So it would appear that the best-case scenario for City would be to play Porto or Monaco and the same applies to Arsenal. Not easy but probably preferable to the other alternatives. Chelsea, meanwhile, probably want to avoid PSG. But they’ll fancy themselves whoever they get.
The draw in Nyoooooooon begins at: 11am.
And afterwards: it’s the draw for the last 32 of the Europa League, featuring Celtic, Everton, Tottenham and ... Liverpool! What a morning this promises to be.
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