UEFA Champions League
UEFA Champions’ League Group Stage Begins
As the group stage of the UEFA Champions League opens this Tuesday, there are records in the offing. Manchester United’s manager, Jose Mourinho will not just be delighted that the club is returning to top flight European football after a year of ‘sabbatical’ leave, he is aiming to be the first person to manage three different clubs to European glory should Manchester United emerge champions next year’s May.
In similar circumstances, defending champions, Real Madrid will be aiming to be the first club to achieve a three straight win since the feat of Germany’s Bayern Munich in the 1970s.
GROUP A (BENFICA, MANCHESTER UNITED, BASEL, CSKA MOSCOW)
In Group A where Manchester United squares up with the trio Portugal’s Benfica, Switzerland’s Basel and Russia’s CSKA Moscow, the English Premership side is expected to start as the group favourite having obtained 10 points out of possible 12 in the new English premiership season.
Manchester United will open its account facing Basel at Old Trafford at 7.45 pm. Basel is reportedly weakened by persistent sales of top players since eliminating United in the 2011 groups.
The club which has been without a win in eight European games, drawing three and losing five had in the 2011/12 season faced Manchester United in the group stage. Basel won and drew the other match.
Manchester United which is making its 21st group stage appearance will be without Phil Jones and Eric Bailly who are serving a match ban.
But Mourinho seems not missing the duo as he told Simon Hart, the UEFA reporter attached to the team that Victor Lindelöf will start alongside Chris Smalling,
“Even if Jones and Bailly were not suspended, probably I would still play Lindelöf and Samlling.
“For me, they are the same level. I think it’s easier for [Lindelöf] to play Champions League – it is more comparable to the style of football in the Portuguese league. There is no need to adapt to the Champions League but he needs a little bit of time to adapt to the Premier League.
“He’s an intelligent kid, very bright, very calm; he knows that step by step he is going to be there.”
Added to that is the possibility of playing without Marouane Fellaini who reportedly picked a calf injury whole on international assignment for Belgium last week.
“Fellaini didn’t train yesterday (Sunday) and let’s see if he can today (Monday)”, Mourinho told the UEFA reporter.
“It’s a very important day for me, much more important than you can imagine. I feel weaker without Fellaini in my squad. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the pitch or on the bench, if his condition improves, he will be selected because I need him”, remarked Mourinho.
In the other Group A match, Benfica is a consistent performer in the Europa League will host CSKA Moscow which finished last in its group in each of the last four seasons – including one that contained United in 2015. –
GROUP B (BAYERN MUNICH, PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN, ANDERLECHT, CELTIC)
Neymar made it his big goal to win the Champions League with Paris Saint-Germain after securing his world-record transfer from Barcelona for 222 million euros ($262 million) in July.
Advancing to the knockout stage should be a formality for his new team, which also includes teenage striker Kylian Mbappe in a new-look and exciting forward line.
Neymar’s first European campaign with PSG will take him to five-time champion Bayern, whose coach Carlo Ancelotti used to manage the French club. Celtic is never an easy team to visit, but the Scottish champions are likely to be fighting it out with Anderlecht for third place.
GROUP C (CHELSEA, ATLETICO MADRID, ROMA, QARABAG)
Qarabag is the first Azerbaijani team to reach this stage and its reward is one of the most competitive groups.
Atletico Madrid has reached the final twice in the past three years, losing both times to Real Madrid, while Chelsea – the 2012 European champion – is the current English champion and has recovered after an uncomfortable start to the Premier League.
Chelsea and Atletico could be in negotiations over the next few months regarding the sale of Diego Costa, the Chelsea striker who has been estranged in his native Brazil for much of the summer and wants to join former club Atletico.
GROUP D (JUVENTUS, BARCELONA, OLYMPIAKOS, SPORTING)
It will be a major surprise if Juventus and Barcelona, European champions a combined seven times, fail to qualify from the group.
They met in the 2015 final, with Barca’s prolific front three of Neymar, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez inspiring a 3-1 win in Berlin. Neymar, of course, is no longer around for Barca, with new signing Ousmane Dembele replacing him.
Juventus lost last season’s final to Real Madrid and hasn’t won the Champions League since 1996. Olympiakos and Sporting are regular qualifiers but rarely advance, with Sporting weakened by the recent sale of midfielder Adrien Silva to Leicester.
GROUP E (SPARTAK MOSCOW, SEVILLA, LIVERPOOL, MARIBOR)
Five-time European champion Liverpool came through the playoffs and gets a chance to avenge its loss to Sevilla in the 2016 Europa League final, which denied the English team a place in last season’s Champions League.
Spartak, which won the Russian Premier League, is in the group stage for the first time since 2012-13, while Slovenian team Maribor is the big outsider in its third attempt to reach the knockout stage. This will likely be considered the weakest of the eight groups.
GROUP F (SHAKHTAR DONETSK, MANCHESTER CITY, NAPOLI, FEYENOORD)
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City avoided tougher options by being drawn into top-seeded Shakhtar’s group.
The Ukrainian champion is always fighting against the disadvantage of not playing a real home game in three years due to the conflict involving pro-Russian separatists around its home city.
Still, Napoli was one of the more difficult opponents for City from the third-seeded teams and eased past Nice in the playoffs round. Feyenoord returns to the group stage after a 15-year absence and is likely to face a steep learning curve.
GROUP G (MONACO, PORTO, BESIKTAS, LEIPZIG)
Monaco, last season’s surprise semifinalist, is the top seed but has been hurt by the departure of key players like Kylian Mbappe, Bernardo Silva and Benjamin Mendy this summer.
The French team comes up against Porto in a rematch of the 2004 final won by the Portuguese team.
Leipzig didn’t even exist then – the club was created in 2009 – and is a newcomer at this level. But the Bundesliga runner-up was the team from the fourth seeds that most of the continent’s heavyweights wanted to avoid. Monaco won its group as a fourth-seeded team last season.
GROUP H (REAL MADRID, BORUSSIA DORTMUND, TOTTENHAM, APOEL)
Real Madrid has won the Champions League three times in the past four years, and is looking to become the first team since Bayern Munich (1974-76) to be European champion in three straight years.
Madrid’s path to the knockout stage may have been smoothed by its fierce rival Barcelona, which weakened Borussia Dortmund by signing Ousmane Dembele.
Tottenham will be hoping for better results at its temporary home of Wembley Stadium, where the English team lost two of its three group games last season and hasn’t won either of its Premier League games there this season. APOEL famously reached the quarterfinals in 2012 against the odds.
Paris St Germain are not used to playing the return leg at home in this season’s Champions League and coach Luis Enrique hopes their fans will make the difference when they try to overturn a 1-0 semi-final deficit against Borussia Dortmund next week.
Dortmund’s Niclas Fuellkrug fired in a first-half goal to seal victory over visitors PSG, who had more possession throughout Wednesday’s game but could not take their chances.
While PSG beat Barcelona in the quarters and Real Sociedad in the last 16, playing the second leg away both times, Luis Enrique knows their home fans could be crucial if they are to reach the final at Wembley on June 1.
“We saw an even match with two teams that play good football when they have the ball,” Luis Enrique told a press conference on Wednesday.
“We both created many scoring chances. This time our opponents scored and we didn’t. The result reflects how close the game was.
“In the last two rounds, they had the home game as their second game, whereas it was the other way round for us. Now it’s a different and new scenario, we’ll have the crowd on our side in the second leg.
“I would have liked to create the chances we have created, but you have to be effective to score. We’ll see what version we show in Paris.”
Despite creating more chances after the break, PSG lost without scoring for the first time across all competitions this season.
“We missed our chances in the second half,” PSG defender Achraf Hakimi told Canal+.
“We knew what they were going to do, with long through balls. We were very focused, the coach repeated it all week.”
PSG have progressed from two of their previous four Champions League knockout ties when losing the first leg, with the first of those coming against Borussia Dortmund in the last 16 in 2019-20.
“We’ve come back from 1-0 down before,” added PSG captain Marquinhos.
“We’ve shown that we can do it, especially at home, with the energy of our supporters, it’s going to be a different scenario. We know we can do a lot better. We just need to take our chances and be more decisive.
“We conceded a goal that we shouldn’t have conceded, and we’ve been talking all week about these deep passes from this Borussia team. It’s the details that make all the difference, and we’re going to do better in the next game if we want to go through.”
-Reuters
Borussia Dortmund’s Niclas Fuellkrug fired in a first-half goal to seal a 1-0 victory over visitors Paris St Germain in a compelling Champions League semi-final first leg on Wednesday.
Nico Schlotterbeck floated a pass into Fuellkrug’s path and the Germany forward controlled the ball with a perfect first touch before drilling a low shot past keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma in the 36th minute.
PSG, fresh from being crowned Ligue 1 champions and desperate to win their first ever Champions League trophy, found it hard going against a disciplined German defence, especially in the first half with forward Kylian Mbappe largely neutralised.
With the return leg in Paris next Tuesday, the winners of the tie will face either Bayern Munich or Real Madrid, who drew 2-2 in their first leg in Germany, in the final at Wembley on June 1.
“It was a well-deserved win, a good team performance,” said Dortmund coach Edin Terzic. “We could have scored more goals, but so could they.”
“That’s why the result is OK from my point of view. We ran a lot, but that’s necessary in a game like this.”
“You have to earn your way to Wembley. All we need now is a draw in the second leg, but we also want to win next week.”
The win also confirmed Germany will get a fifth qualifying spot for next season’s Champions League, with Dortmund being the main beneficiaries at the moment, sitting in fifth place in the Bundesliga with three games left to play.
Dortmund went close just before halftime with Marcel Sabitzer but his shot was blocked by Donnaruma. The French side improved after the break and went agonisingly close to an equaliser in the 52nd minute with Mbappe curling a shot onto the far post and then Achraf Hakimi also hitting the woodwork on the rebound.
Four minutes later Fabian Ruiz saw his stooping header sail wide after being left completely unmarked in the box before Dortmund keeper Gregor Kobel kept out Ousmane Dembele’s close range effort in the 71st.
Dortmund, winners in 1997 and looking to reach their first final since 2013, soaked up the pressure as PSG’s Vitinha narrowly missed the target 10 minutes later.
-Reuters
Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti was disappointed with his players’ attitude, calling them “soft” for defending too deep in their 2-2 draw at Bayern Munich in the Champions League semi-final, first leg on Tuesday.
Ancelotti was critical of his team’s commitment after Vinicius Jr’s first-half goal gave them the lead as Bayern struck twice in four minutes early in the second half to turn the game around before Vinicius equalised from the penalty spot.
“The result is good but on a level of play we could have done better. Bayern showed their best version and we didn’t. We have to improve for next week,” an introspective Ancelotti told Movistar Plus+.
“In the first half we defended but with little intensity, in the second half when they took the lead we started to press a bit more, but not enough.
“The feeling was that we were comfortable, but we lacked intensity. We gave them too many chances to take control of the game. We didn’t want to play in a low block and we went on doing that. We were soft.”
Ancelotti defended his decision to substitute midfielder Toni Kroos, who set up Vinicius’ opener with a brilliant pass and was arguably Real’s best player.
The Italian said that he made four substitutions in an effort to shake his team up and was relieved that they ended up scoring the equaliser that he believes “left the tie open” for the return leg in Madrid next week.
“Jude Bellingham had a cramp, Toni Kroos played a spectacular game but the plan was to try to recover the control of the game by putting fresh legs in,” Ancelotti told a press conference.
“As always, at this point in the season we have a great opportunity to play in another final. It’s an even tie against a great team. It will be another 90 minutes of suffering but in an atmosphere that we know quite well. The fans are going to help us.”
-Reuters
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