Chelsea await Champions League Draw
August 24th, 2006 by Adam ToppingChelsea?s group stage opponents in this season?s Champions League will be determined today (Thursday) when the draw is held in Monaco at 5pm BST.
The 16 winners from this week?s qualifying matches join the automatic qualifiers to make up the 32 teams in the group stage. They will be divided into four pots for the draw according to a coefficient decided by past European results.
Chelsea will be in Pot 2 and will be drawn against a team from each of the other three pots. The fact that we cannot draw another Premiership side means we are guaranteed to play either Spanish or Italian opposition from Pot 1 containing the top seeds.
Previous Champions League opponents CSKA Moscow, Anderlecht and Galatasaray are possible opponents from the other pots, as are Hamburg, the club that this week sold Chelsea Khalid Boulahrouz and Dynamo Kiev, the team that nurtured Andriy Shevchenko.
The full list of clubs is:
Pot 1
Barcelona (Esp)
Milan (Ita)
Real Madrid (Esp)
Internazionale (Ita)
Liverpool (Eng)
Arsenal (Eng)
Man United (Eng)
Valencia (Esp)
Pot 2
Lyon (Fra)
Porto (Por)
PSV Eindhoven (Ned)
Bayern Munich (Ger)
CHELSEA (ENG)
Roma (Ita)
Celtic (Sco)
Lille (Fra)
Pot 3
Sporting Lisbon (Por)
Benfica (Por)
Bordeaux (Fra)
Steaua Bucharest (Rom)
Werder Bremen (Ger)
Olympiakos (Ger)
CSKA Moscow (Rus)
AEK Athens (Gre)
Pot 4
Anderlecht (Bel)
Dynamo Kiev (Ukr)
Levski Sofia (Bul)
Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukr)
Galatasaray (Tur)
Hamburg (Ger)
Spartak Moscow (Rus)
FC Copenhagen (Den)
The group stage match schedule is:
Matchday 1 - 12/13 September
Matchday 2 - 26/27 September
Matchday 3 - 17/18 October
Matchday 4 - 31 October/1 November
Matchday 5 - 21/22 November
Matchday 6 - 5/6 December
The winners and runners-up from each group will go forward to the knockout phase next year, with the Final in Athens on 23rd May. Teams finishing third in each group will move into the UEFA Cup.
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August 24th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
So a one in five chance of getting Barcelona or one of the other European big boys (seeing as you can’t get drawn against another English team - rigged you say?).
Do you think Jose will relish the chance to meet up with his previous employers again this early i nthe competition?
August 24th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Well I firmly believe to be the Best you have to beat the Best! In that instance I don’t mind really who we get at this stage, the bigger the better though it is nice to get a so called ‘easier group’ so you can at least concentrate on matters more close to home until the real action starts in the Knockout stages.