SOCCER/CHAMPIONS LEAGUE:ROBERTO MANCINI received a late boost yesterday to his campaign to have funds made available for some last-minute squad strengthening as Manchester City were handed about as tough a Champions League draw as they could have imagined on the way to Monaco.
The English champions will start their already rather well-resourced assault on the competition in a little over two weeks at the Bernabeu where nine-times champions Real Madrid will be waiting. After that there will be the clashes with German champions Borussia Dortmund and Dutch title holders Ajax to come. Mancini will doubtless see his line-up as requiring even more strength in depth than is presently available to him.
“In my opinion, and I think most people will agree, it’s the hardest, the most competitive group,” said Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo moments after the draw had been made.
As it happens, it might actually have been far worse for both his side and Mancini’s as at one point during the proceedings there was a 50-50 chance that another of the continent’s biggest spenders, Paris St Germain, would be drawn into Group D as the third seeds. Instead it was Ajax, represented at the event by Marc Overmars, who said his club would relish the challenge. “We have to be realistic, of course,” he said, “but we have a young team with players the others will not so well so we look forward to it without fear”. Completing the group are Dortmund, fourth seeds here despite having beaten Bayern Munich into second place in the Bundesliga by eight points last season.
As he left the draw, Manchester United chief executive David Gill acknowledged the scale of the task faced by his club’s cross-city rivals with reference to the Germans. “They got an interesting group alright; they got Dortmund and who would have thought that the champions of Germany would be in Pot Four.”
His own side’s draw was a little more favourable with Alex Ferguson’s men set to take on Galatasaray once again as well as Romania’s Cluj and Braga of Portugal who featured two seasons ago in the Europa League final in Dublin.
“They’re all good teams but overall we have to look forward to it with optimism,” he said. “As Sir Alex is on the record as saying, we under-performed in the Champions League last year, particularly given our performance in the previous four seasons – we got to three finals – so we have to make sure that we correct that.”
Getting back to a final at the stadium in which they were well beaten by Barcelona in 2011 would, he said, be wonderful but “the motivation is always there”, he insisted. “The experience of being in London was brilliant but there’s always a motivation wherever it is. The following year it’s in Benfica . . . so we’d be delighted to be in a final no matter what European country it is in.”
Asked about reports that Wayne Rooney might be sold even before this year’s competition gets under way, he said that he had laughed when he had seen them. “There is absolutely not an ounce of truth in that story,” he said.
Chelsea, meanwhile, enjoyed mixed fortunes in the draw, landing tricky second seeds in the form of Shakhtar Donetsk, what should be relatively straightforward fourth seeds (debutants Nordsjaelland from Denmark) but formidable third seeds in Juventus.
Celtic were rewarded for coming successfully through the qualifiers with a tough but intriguing group draw that in addition to Barcelona will involve clashes with Benfica and Spartak Moscow.
Being grouped with the Russians should mean a return to his former club for Republic of Ireland international Aiden McGeady but the glamour of taking on Barcelona is likely to particularly delight Celtic fans, not least for the way it will further highlight the vastly different fortunes being experienced when compared to old rivals Rangers.
Qualifying for the knockout stages will be quite an ask for the Scots, however, with a good start at home to Benfica pretty much a requirement if serious hope of progression is to be sustained into the closing group games.
Last year’s beaten finalists, Bayern Munich, will take on Valencia, the side they beat in the 2001 title decider in Milan, as well as Lille and BATE while Arsenal would appear to have been handed a kind enough draw with Arsene Wenger’s men set to take on Schalke 04, Greek champions Olympiacos and opponents the manager will be all too familiar with, French champions Montpellier, the club from which striker Olivier Giroud was signed earlier in the summer.
