The away, unseeded teams are doing oddly well today (so far). An win by Breidabrik to make Praha's two away goals from the previous leg moot, a draw by Pitea (though not enough of a result to stave off elimination - both Swedish teams are now out), and both currently-live matches are drawn at halftime (one of which would mean the unseeded team advances if it holds). =edit= And one of those halftime draws has now broken... in favor of the away team! Though Spartak still trails Atletico on away goals
Didn't see the Sparta 2nd leg, but it sounded like the first in that Sparta dominated the first half and then faded a bit in 2nd half. One key difference, in the first half in Iceland they scored 2 goals. Attendance was also somewhat disappointing at 721. There are a few Sparta fans saying they should have gone up 1-0 right before conceding as fans are saying there was a "scandalously unrecognized goal." Sparta had 22 shots though, need to be more efficient. Slavia is now the only Czech team left in either Champions League this season, which has many Sparta fans annoyed as they consider themselves the bigger club.
Round of 32 - Second leg Sparta Prague 0 - 1 Breidablik Thorvaldsdottir 55 Breidablik won 4-2 on aggregate. Brøndby 1 - 1 Piteå N.Sørensen 32 - Karlsen 88(og) Brøndby won 2-1 on aggregate. Zürich 1 - 3 Minsk Humm 45 - Ogbiagbevha 10, 76, Duben 78 Minsk won 4-1 on aggregate. Atletico Madrid 1 - 1 Spartak Subotica Strom 83 - Adamek 56 Slovic missed penalty (53) for Spartak. Atletico Madrid won 4-3 on aggregate. Paris Saint-Germain 0 - 0 Braga PSG won 7-0 on aggregate. Glasgow City 4 - 1 Chertanovo Lauder 7, 76, Shine 29, McLauchlan 67 - Komissarova 3 Glasgow City won 5-1 on aggregate. Arsenal 2 - 0 Fiorentina Little 43(p), Miedema 74 Arsenal won 6-0 on aggregate.
Interesting that Italy, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland, and Austria are all now entirely out of the competition. Crazy that so many nations with 2 teams are shut out so early. OTOH, of the top 6 nations, 5 of them still have both of their teams surviving.
I went in and updated the R32/R16 statistics to the Wikipedia page from earlier... Trivia update time! -We are up to 103 clubs from 37 nations participating in the R32, up from 96 clubs from 35 nations -Breoablik and Minsk advancing to the R16 for the first time. No R32 debutante advanced to the R16 -Swedish teams have failed to advance from the R32 to the R16 for the first time - not once, but twice, as both participants were eliminated -Zurich and Sparta Praha have both failed to advance from the R32 for the first time. In all previous years when both were in the R32, exactly one advanced, with an exact 50/50 split between the two My next project, leveraging off of my previous post, is to look at R16 advancing rate based on number of UWCL berths. Not having a Russian or Italian team in the R16 feels very weird to me, and I don't know off the top of my head if either has occurred before
The draw for the Round of 16 is on Monday at 13:30 CET. Clubs from the same country can not be drawn against each other in this round. Seeded Lyon (FRA, holders) Wolfsburg (GER) Paris Saint-Germain (FRA) Barcelona (ESP) Bayern München (GER) Slavia Praha (CZE) Manchester City (ENG) Brøndby (DEN) Unseeded Fortuna Hjørring (DEN) BIIK-Kazygurt (KAZ) Glasgow City (SCO) Atlético Madrid (ESP) FC Twente (NED) Arsenal (ENG) FC Minsk (BLR) Breidablik (ISL)
So, actually, not having a Russian team in the R16 has been "normal" for a while now. But it's definitely not normal to be missing an Italian team, and of course I've mentioned above that we've never missed out on a Swedish team in the R16 either. Expect RUS to fall out of the top 12 next year, replaced by NED or KAZ Also, I realize I'm not a fan of the current layout anyway (or, at least, I've found another reason to not like it). There's currently no way for a team with just 1 berth to get straight into the R32 (yellow boxes). I think that nations 8-12 should just have the 1/1 split between the QR and the R32, no questions, and then depending on how many teams join a season overall, the champions of 13-16 are the ones that can get bumped into the R32.
As mentioned above, with Juventus getting Barcelona and Fiorentina getting Arsenal right away in the Round of 32, Italian teams had basically the worse possible draw, respectively, for a seeded team and for an unseeded one (you could argue that only Juventus getting OL would have been worse than that). Of course, on top of having both teams eliminated too soon, there are going to be long-term consequences hitting Italy's rating for this disaster of a 1st round draw!
so its Russian roulette for the seeded teams on who draws Arsenal?(who with the return from injry of prime players could be ranked as high as top 3)
talent wise/name recogntion, on paper, I would rate Arsenal slightly lower than OL. The problem is so many of their big name players are coming off serious injuries(Nobbs,Little Walti,Kemme, Carter), if these players ever get back together their prime, than WATCH OUT!
Nobbs is almost back--getting more and more minutes in recent games. Walti played last game but has a ways to go.
The draw is made. Glasgow City - Brøndby Barcelona - FC Minsk BIIK-Kazygurt - Bayern München Lyon - Fortuna Hjørring Paris Saint-Germain - Breidablik Wolfsburg - FC Twente Slavia Praha - Arsenal Manchester City - Atlético Madrid Matches played 16/17 & 30/31 October.
Well, Arsenal has got one of the lower-rated seeded teams, to the point that no-one one who wasn't aware of this particular situation would be particularly surprised about this pairing: it almost looks as the seedings were reversed and as the seeded team was Arsenal. After this round, most of the remaining teams should be high-level enough that all pairings should be competitive or very competitive already (probably the weakest quarter-finalist should come from the winner of Glasgow City - Brøndby). Most of the pairings look quite lopsided in favour of the seeded teams, that should all advance without much effort (except, indeed, Slavia Praga). Maybe, the most open game could be Manchester City-Atletico Madrid, although the latest matches the Spanish team played both domestically and in Champions' League suggest that they're not in a good moment of form and that after all it could happen that Manchester City dispose of them quite easily.
I'm actually interested in both German matchups... Twente has eliminated Bayern before, (Bayern in general doesn't have a great record compared to other German teams,) and we know BIIK have some occasional surprises up their sleeves. I mean, even with Twente's experience, I expect Wolfsburg to be Wolfsburg, but I think both ties could potentially be somewhat close.
back then, Twente had prominent Dutch NT members on the squad(van de Sanden, Dekker, Roord, van der Gragt). However since that upset 4years ago all of them left for richer clubs & Twente now languishes in 5th place in their league(which isn't considered stromg) Little was the darling of the NWSL & got 2 mvp trophy's on her mantle to prove it, Wondering though if she ever returned to her former form yet after the ACL ?
Not sure about that, but with all due respect to Slavia Praha, I see Arsenal advancing from that match up.
I've seen Little play off and on over the last two years and she's been consistently excellent. She is certainly a vital player for Arsenal--scored a goal yesterday and might have had an assist as well (not sure if her pass to Nobbs, who one-touched to Miedema, who rocketed the ball in the next with her left foot, counts as an assist for Little).
Ranking alert with a view to the 2021/22 and the potential 3 clubs for the big leagues reform. Spain have overtaken Sweden for the first time ever in the current ranking 2015/16 to 2019/20 1. France 82.500** 2. Germany 62.500** 3. England 52.000** 4. Spain 49.500** 5. Sweden 45.500 6. Czech Republic 40.000* 7. Denmark 32.500** 8. Netherlands 32.000* 9. Italy 30.500 10. Kazakhstan 28.000* 11. Norway 27.500 12. Iceland 25.000* 13. Switzerland 24.000 14. Russia 22.500 15. Scotland 20.500* 16. Belarus 18.000* ** two teams still in the competition *one team still in the competition
Breidabliks gameplan worked perfectly. Sit back and counterattack. Simple. Sparta dominated the first half and had a shot to the crossbar. In the second half Breidablik eased into the game and after having scored had a claim to a penalty and a shot to the crossbar. About the Breiðablik team. They ended second place this year in the Úrvalsdeild (the Icelandic top league), without loosing a single match. It is a very young squad. The average age is 22 and the oldest player who participated in the game was their main striker Berglind Þorvaldsdóttir, aged 27, who scored 16 goals in 17 games this season and was a joint topscorer in the Icelandic league. Other notable players are Agla María Albertsdóttir aged 20, Alexandra Jóhannsdóttir aged 19, Karólína Lea Vilhjálmsdóttir aged 18 and Áslaug Munda Gunnlaugsdóttir aged 18. All players with international caps for Iceland.
I had a stream for the first leg and their fans were awesome, sounded like 3-4x as many people as were there. The definitely did a good job of frustrating and sounds like they have a good base to build on the next few seasons.