Date: 28th August 2008 Time: 1800 CET Location: Monaco Pot 1: Chelsea Liverpool Barcelona Arsenal Manchester United Lyon Inter Milan Real Madrid Pot 2: Bayern Munich PSV Eindhoven Villareal AS Roma FC Porto Werder Bremen Sporting Lisbon Juventus Pot 3: Marseille Zenit St. Petersburg Steaua Bucaresti Panathinaikos Bordeaux Celtic FC Basel Fenerbahce Pot 4: Shakhtar Donetsk Fiorentina Atletico Madrid Dinamo Kiev CFR Cluj AaB Aalborg Anorthosis BATE Borisov SAUCE
imagine this: Real Madrid Juventus/Bayern Munich Marseille Fiorentina/Atletico Madrid Talk about bad luck then.
All the English teams in pot one? Was the potting based on last years CL finishing or a 5 year coefficient? Look at the bright side, at least we won't draw Lyon at the group stages, LOL! I bet the English teams get the easiest draws as usual.
Pot 2 is pretty strong. A alot stronger then recent years but pot 3 an 4 look fairly easy. What we want: Real Madrid Sporting Lisbon[] / Werder Bremen FC Basel/Steaua Bucaresti AaB Aalborg <--- Only cause its like 2 hours drive from where i live. What we don't want: Real Madrid Juventus/Bayern Munich Marseille Fiorentina
I don't care who we draw or even if we're in a group of death. Bring it on, if we can't beat the tough teams then we have no business being in the competition.
That would have made sense if we were only competing in the Champions League but we are not. The CL runs co-side the other competitions we are competing for, so if we draw a tough group like the group of death then the team faces tougher opponents and tougher physical matches which will exhaust the team and the result might be that it will effect the other competitions we are in.
We also wouldn't be able to draw two Italian teams in the same group, so Juve/Fiorentina is out of the question. The toughest group I could see when I had a little look was, Real Madrid Bayern Munich Zenit Fiorentina Ouch.
Cadena SER's expert on international footie (and expert is an understantement, the man is a freaking encyclopedia) said Zenit's level has gone down a notch or two. Of course, they might still pick it up before we play them, but I'm not overly worried. I'm much more concerned about drawing Shakhtar, Dynamo or Fiorentina from Pot 4.
if they lose arshavin by the end of the month...i'd take marseille on. sucks all the english clubs are in pot 1...would've loved to taken on chelsea/liverpool/arsenal. but celtic are in the other pot, so i wouldn't mind taking them out. one less british club for fsc to gush over. anyway, my 2 picks from each pot: bayern/sporting celtic/fener kiev/fiorentina bring it! but have a feeling we'll get: psv steaua fiorentina
i'm not sure but if you want you can watch it online: http://www3.myp2p.eu/broadcast.php?matchid=17120&part=sports
We are the bottom of pot 1 Real Madrid CF (ESP) - 93.837 Bayern is the top of pot 2 FC Bayern München (GER) - 92.078 If we do bad this UCL season (and Bayern does well), we could be demoted to pot 2? Is this correct?
The Celtic coach says he would like to meet us in the group stage: Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jwTX2bp9Z0ur7hkGKWWy_xueEY_w Celtic wouldn't be the worst team out there to draw, but there are easier for that pot.
Technically, we already are in pot 2. Milans failure to qualify is the only reason we are in pot one.
Not that we deserved to be in Pot 1 anyway. We've been lacking international success for a LOOOOOOOONG time now. Would be nice to change that this year.
No, we are in pot 1 because Milan sucks. And since they suck and we don't, we deserve pot 1 more than they do. The capacity for self-flagellation of some in these boards is amazing. To the extreme of saying that pot 1 "belongs" to a team that finished 5th in their league and we're lucky that they did us the favour of not qualifying...