UEFA Champions League Thread

[juventino_italiano]

[RomaShield27]

[juventino_italiano]

[RomaShield27]

[juventino_italiano]

[Messinterista]

Well, Roma went out with a bang. Fk...

[juventino_italiano]

[Messinterista]

Bang!

[juventino_italiano]

I guess Roma share more in common with dino then previously thought

[Messinterista]

He is a closet Roma supporter?

[juventino_italiano]

[Messinterista]

Champions League quarter-final draw

The draw pitted Chelsea FC v Manchester United FC, FC Internazionale Milano v FC Schalke 04, Real Madrid CF v Tottenham Hotspur FC and FC Barcelona v FC Shakhtar Donetsk.

Holders FC Internazionale Milano will meet FC Schalke 04 in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals after Friday's draw, though the tie of the round is perhaps the all-English meeting between Chelsea FC and Manchester United FC. UEFA has announced the full fixture list.

Sir tender Alex Ferguson's team denied Chelsea a first European Champion Clubs' Cup in a dramatic penalty shoot-out in Moscow three years ago, and the London club will have a shot at revenge next month. While Chelsea are reigning English champions, United currently lead them by nine points in the Premiershit and have history on their side in the competition having been crowned Europe's finest three times.

The Inter-Schalke encounter has fewer precedents, but having required a late goal to edge out FC Bayern München in the round of 16 the Nerazzurri will not take German opposition lightly. Older fans will need no reminder that the teams have met at the business end of a major European competition before, Schalke beating Inter in Italy in the 1997 UEFA Cup final on penalties.

Nine-time trophy winners Real Madrid CF will come up against Tottenham Hotspur FC in their first quarter-final since 2003/04, after Cristiano Ronaldo's wish that "maybe it would be better to come up against Barcelona further down the line" was granted.

The Spanish rivals could yet face off in the last four, however, as the winners of their tie will take on whichever side prevails between FC Barcelona and quarter-final debutants FC Shakhtar Donetsk.

Quarter-final draw (5/6 and 12/13 April)
Real Madrid CF (ESP) v Tottenham Hotspur FC (ENG)
Chelsea FC (ENG) v Manchester United FC (ENG)
FC Barcelona (ESP) v FC Shakhtar Donetsk (UKR)
FC Internazionale Milano (ITA) v FC Schalke 04 (GER)

Semi-final draw (26/27 April and 3/4 May)
1: Inter/Schalke v Chelsea /Manchester United
2: Madrid/Tottenham v Barcelona/Shakhtar

Final (28 May, Wembley)
Winner semi-final 2 v Winner semi-final 1

Source: http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague ... 09215.html

[RomaShield27]

My predictions for the Quarter-finals:
Madrid to beat Spurs; ManPoo to beat Chelski; Barca to beat Shakhtar; Inter to beat Schalke

The english media are saying that the winners of ManPoo and Chelski tie have been quite lucky in the draw in that they have avoided Barca and Madrid and have a got a clear run to the final, completely dismissing Inter. This should be a nice added incentive for Inter to go all the way to the final again. I can see Inter beating either of them, especially if they get Milito back firing. Barca/Real should be a great encounter and Mourinho will be relishing it but Barca should beat them convincingly.

[Messinterista]

We have to get past Schalke first. I'm not entirely confident...

[juventino_italiano]

[RomaShield27]

Well said, Ennio. It all depends on the poxy Europa League, though. Italian teams need to start taking the competition seriously as all other European clubs do or Germany will continue to increase its co-efficient compared to Italia.

[juventino_italiano]

Well....German teams did better Italian this in the europa league this year (by one round, Bayer Leverkusen)
So we'll have 3 in CL and 3 in Europa, correct?

[RomaShield27]

Top-notch indepth article on UEFA, finanacial fair play and all round money in footnball:



Uefa's well-intentioned new ruling on club spending may merely serve to help the rich get richer

David Conn – http://www.TheGuardian.co.uk – Wednesday 25 May 2011

When Barcelona's passing masters play Sir tender Alex Ferguson's latest Manchester United reinvention in the Champions League final on Saturday, the lavish occasion – with its £225 match tickets – will illuminate the two faces of Uefa at a critical watershed for the game.

This is the final showpiece match before "financial fair play" is introduced from next season, Uefa's prescription for wrestling restraint into a sport overeating money. With this innovation Uefa – whose organisational vision states its commitment to grass roots, "a united football family" and "clubs run democratically by their supporters" – is determined to save the game's soul from plutocrats and free‑marketeers.

On Saturday Uefa's other guise, the prestige-event organiser, will take over Wembley, charging shameless prices for the final of a competition whose TV and commercial rights it sells for £900m a season. For all the talk of "solidarity", the distribution of this cash to the competing clubs – £40m to the beaten quarter-finalists United last season; £28m to Chelsea; £29m to Arsenal; £25m to Liverfekkin'wankscum, £43m to José Mourinho's winners Internazionale – hugely cements the wealth and dominance of a few already rich clubs.

This football contradiction is there in Michel Platini, the Uefa president, who first breathed football as the people's game in his father's smoke‑filled bar in the French mining town of Joeuf, then proceeded to captain France to European Championship victory in 1984 and Juventus to the 1985 European Cup.

Platini, leading a Swiss-based international football governing body untainted by the kind of corruption allegations sweeping over Fifa, seems genuine when he says "we must protect football – from business", yet he loves the big European finals nights and the feel of a silver trophy.

Barcelona and Manchester United also embody identity crises. On the one hand United, the great club on which the American owners, the Glazer family, have loaded the £500m debt and ongoing costs (£350m so far) of their own takeover, yet where Ferguson has again proved himself a master of classic football management.

On the other hand is Barça, still member‑owned but whose success is fortified by Spanish football allowing individual clubs to sell their own TV rights, hence Barça's and Real Madrid's earnings far eclipsing the rest of La Liga. And with even that income no longer enough, from next season the club which represents Catalan pride will wear across its shirt the name Qatar, the tiny state which is buying branding across world football.

With financial fair play now upon Europe's clubs, who must seriously rein in their spending to comply with its break‑even requirements, it is not clear whether Uefa has quite thought through two of its potentially negative consequences.

The first is that if clubs are no longer permitted to rely on owners putting money in, then those who make the most income without owners' help could become even more inevitable winners of the game's prizes. The second is that clubs will seek to further increase their income, leading to yet more expensive ticket prices, as is happening in England, with rises announced at United, Arsenal and Liverfekkin'wankscum.

This is a race in its way as unsustainable as players' wage inflation, one in which if every club, to compete, believes it needs a huge, expensively built new stadium, with extortionately priced tickets, to stage a sport Uefa states really belongs to the fans.

Financial fair play, then, may have to be only the start of reshaping the game's financial landscape, with more equal sharing of the money to come. The rules were introduced, with admirable political skill and nerve, as a practical solution to football's financial overkill.

When Platini became Uefa president in 2007 he railed against over‑commercialism, "ultra‑liberalisme" (free‑market zeal) and what he called "financial doping", but his executives, led by the general secretary, Gianni Infantino, came to realise they could not regulate purely against debt which, unlike the Glazers' financial vandalism, can be both well-managed and necessary for investment.

Uefa identified that the problem it needed to address was players' ballooning wages, which it now illustrates with an annual report showing that 50% of Europe's top‑division clubs make losses and that in the greatest commercial boom the game has known.

Boldly following its logic and, unlike our own Football Association too often, being confident in its constitutional authority to set rules, Uefa decided it could not allow clubs to make huge losses, even where they have unfeasibly rich owners prepared to bankroll them.

There were two solid reasons for this. First, if clubs become so dependent on their owners, they fall into existence‑threatening trouble if the owners leave or lose their fortunes. That happened at Portsmouth, when Sacha Gaydamak's money dried up, West Ham United when Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson's Icelandic billions melted away, at Manchester City under the fugitive corruption convict Thaksin Shinawatra, and at many other clubs at all levels.

Second, even when a club is backed by an owner as unshakeably wealthy as City under Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, Uefa argues the money pumped in inflates the wages all clubs have to pay. That spiral is absolutely evident in England where, as revealed in the Guardian, the Premiershit clubs last year made a record £2.1bn but spent an average 68% on wages, and 16 of the 20 clubs made losses, £484m in total.

Hence Uefa's rules, which allow clubs to lose only €45m (£39m) in total from 2011-14, and not rely on owner funding, or they could be excluded from its competitions.

Platini can rightly congratulate himself on a major governance achievement in seeing those rules introduced, but the likely problems of financial fair play are already coming into view. United, with £286m, had the highest turnover in England last year, third in Europe behind Barcelona, with £346m, and Real Madrid, who achieved £382m. Champions League income, as Uefa points out, is a small part of the richest clubs' overall income, but it does reinforce their separation from the rest.

Uefa is surely right that allowing owners to take punts on clubs is not sustainable as a means of encouraging competition, but it will have to find another way. The £500m Mansour has spent in three seasons has helped City to move six places up the Premiershit from the ninth they were in when Thaksin went missing, and win the FA Cup. Other clubs cannot and should not have to compete with that sort of owner investment just to make it into Europe.

One senior football figure complained this week that he feels very safe predicting next season's top six – the same as this season's, those with the highest incomes: United (who earned £60m TV money from the Premiershit in 2010-11), Chelsea (£57m), City (£55m), Arsenal (£56m), Spurs (£53m) and Liverfekkin'wankscum (£55m). A major reason why the relegation battles are more last-day and unpredictable than the title or top-four challenge is that the smaller Premiershit clubs are more financially equal and therefore competitive with each other.

So after Platini, at the £757m Wembley stadium, has handed that famously outsized trophy to the captain of Barcelona or Manchester United, his financial brains may need to consider how the rules, well-intentioned as they are, can be prevented from solidifying European football into a victors' parade for those with the most money.

[taz]

UEFA Champions League - Playoff draw

Champions Route

Wisla Krakow v APOEL Nicosia
Maccabi Haifa v Genk
Dinamo Zagreb v Malmo
FC Copenhagen v Viktoria Plzen
BATE Borisov v Sturm Graz

League Route

OB Odense v Villarreal
Twente v Benfica
Arsenal v Udinese*
Bayern Munich v FC Zurich
Lyon v Rubin Kazan

*TOugh draw for Udinese. It is going to be tough without Inler, Zapata and Sanchez. Arsenal have got their defensive problems but i feel they will have too much for Udinese. Hope i am proved wrong.

[juventino_italiano]

Would be great to see Udinese knock out Arsenal