Champions League draw kind to José Mourinho while Borussia Dortmund, Napoli and Marseille lie in wait for Arsenal
By the time it was all done – and Uefa certainly dragged it out – there could no doubt which of the British teams in the Champions League draw had come off best. Chelsea had drawn Schalke, fourth in last season's Bundesliga, FC Basel and one of the sides José Mourinho had mentioned earlier this summer when he played down what it meant to win the Europa League. "You don't get teams like Steaua Bucharest in the Champions League," he pithily observed. In Prague, for the European Super Cup, it was easy to imagine that familiar smile on his lips.
David Moyes might also think the draw came out about as obligingly as he might have hoped for Manchester United, in his first season as a Champions League manager. Shakhtar Donetsk helped to eliminate Chelsea last season but Moyes, one suspects, will know it could have been worse when the other teams are Real Sociedad and Bayer Leverkusen. All three could be tricky opponents but it is not a set of fixtures that will make Moyes suspect the conspiracy he recently alleged of the Premier League extends to Uefa.
Manchester City should be relatively happy, too, even if they do have to go to Bayern Munich to face the holders and revisit that ignominious night when Carlos Tevez decided he had had enough of taking orders from Roberto Mancini. At least this time City have been spared the Group of Death that came their way last season in the form of Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund and Ajax, the champions of Spain, Germany and the Netherlands respectively. CSKA Moscow and Viktoria Plzen are a grade down even if City are hardly in a position to get too far ahead of themselves considering their record in this competition.
Three wins in 12 attempts, or none in six last season, means there should always be a note of caution, particularly when two came against a Villarreal side who would later be relegated from La Liga and the other was against an already-qualified and demob happy Bayern team. It is fair to say they probably have their best chance now of getting to the knockout phase and have had a more generous draw than two of the other British teams.
For Celtic, a group comprising Barcelona, Milan and Ajax is fascinating and frightening in equal measure. Neil Lennon's team, in pot four, were always vulnerable to being assigned these kind of opponents. Arsenal, three pots higher, must have hoped they would not be so susceptible.
Of all the English sides, Arsène Wenger's suddenly look the most at risk even taking into account the fact they have reached the knockout stages 13 years in a row. Dortmund were the team everyone wanted to avoid from pot three. Napoli were that side in pot four. To get them both, along with Marseille, means playing the runners-up from last season's French, German and Italian leagues. It also means they will come up against the Napoli striker Gonzalo Higuaín, who they missed out on signing this summer.
Arsenal, in other words, have suffered the vagaries of a coefficients points system whereby Dortmund are ranked alongside Basel, Olympiakos and Galatasaray, despite reaching the final last season. It is a strange system – Liverpool, say, would have been in pot two had they qualified – and Wenger is probably entitled to feel his club have had the rough end of the deal.
Mourinho certainly had a point, speaking before the draw started, when he predicted there might be a shock in store for one of the top seeds. "In the fourth pot, you have a team that plays to win the Champions League [Napoli]. The third seeds, another one [Borussia Dortmund]. And in the second seeds, lots of them. Dortmund, a finalist last year, are third seeds. So you have a phenomenally powerful club third seed. You have Napoli, one of the biggest investors this summer, a fourth seed. People who want to win the Champions League, like PSG, Juventus, Milan, second seeds. So the situation can be very complicated."
As it turned out, Chelsea have had some good fortune, pitted against two of the teams they beat in the Europa League. Schalke, probably their most dangerous opponent, finished 36 points behind Bayern in the Bundesliga last season. They did come top of Arsenal's Champions League group but, all the same, they are not a team that will fill Mourinho with great trepidation. This season they have taken only one point from their first three Bundesliga fixtures and conceded nine goals, including a 4-0 thumping at Wolfsburg.
Leverkusen have made a considerably better start, winning all three of their matches, and Ryan Giggs will be able to tell a few of his team-mates about the time the German club knocked United out of the 2002 semi-finals.
It is Arsenal with the most to worry about. Celtic, 300-1 to lift the trophy in the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon next May, can at least regard Group H as an adventure and remind anyone who gets too patronising that they did beat Barcelona at Parkhead last season.=
Arsenal want to be more than just sightseers. They could be forgiven for looking at United, City and particularly Chelsea with a certain amount of envy.
via Football news, match reports and fixtures | theguardian.com http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/34708/f/663845/s/3090ab9f/sc/13/l/0L0Stheguardian0N0Cfootball0Cblog0C20A130Caug0C290Cchelsea0Earsenal0Echampions0Eleague/story01.htm
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