How is this draw set up? It looks like they plan on making a draw for each round. We don't know any information about who the winner of Round of 16 Match 1 will play, right? Or is there a bracket set up somewhere?
After the current round is over there will be a draw for the remaining rounds (quarterfinal and semifinal) on Friday 12 March.
Re: Re: CL Knockout Format Couple questions that I haven't been able to find the answer to on uefa.com: --Are the teams reseeded for the quarterfinal draw? (I.e., four seeds, four non-seeds, similar to the round of 16 draw) --Can two teams from the same country be drawn against each other? Last year, this was officially permitted but by "coincidence" the three Italian teams in the quarters were all drawn into separate brackets.
The draw on Friday is an open draw where anybody can play anybody. So it is possible that Milan could face Real, Arsenal face Chelsea, etc.
The knockout format really opens up the opportunities to the lesser leagues. Since 1999-2000, when the CL expanded to 32 teams, the final 8 had been dominated by the big 4 leagues. In each of those years, only 1 team was not from the big 4: 2000: Porto 2001: Galatasaray 2002: Panathinaikos 2003: Ajax Now, with a knock-out 2nd round, all in a sudden 3 teams were not from the big 4: Porto, Monaco, Lyon. If there were a group phase 2nd round, I am sure Man U and Juventus would have advanced at the expense of two of these three teams.
I agree. I think this new format is good for the CL. Even though I hope Milan make the final I wouldn't be unhappy if Porto make the final. The last non-big 4 league club to make it to the final was Ajax in '96. It would be nice to see some new blood in the final.
Yes, the idea that the group phase would have ensured the advancement of the bigger teams is true. That, of course, means the current format will meet with challenge come the end of the tournament. This creates more excitement and uncertainty, but also means the better teams are not certain to go through. For example, Man U with Rio Ferdinand probably beats Porto, plus there eas supposedly an inaccurate offside call against Man U. If the group phase 2 were still around, maybe Man U would have had Ferdinand back in the latter games. But the tradeoff is that the knockout stage kind of counteracts the imbalance of funding among clubs and brings us back to the days when ypu could see Red Star Belgrade in the final. Undoubtedly, this is better for the game in general.
Fully agree with this. I think it's worth mentioning, though, that in the days of the great eastern european teams--red star belgrade, steaua bucharest--they were actually far better sides than they are now so those wins weren't as much upsets as they'd seem today. This was before the fall of the berlin wall, when communist govenrments were still largely in power and tended to keep their best football players from emigrating to western european nations where they could get bigger salaries. Still, point taken--the number of upsets when the European cup was a pure knockout competition was much greater.