Friday, July 28, 2006

Champions League 3rd Round Draw Today

The draw for the 3rd round of qualifying for the 2006-2007 Champions League is today, at I believe 4 a.m. PST. Originally I thought that this was a "blind draw", meaning any team could draw against any team. In the last few says I was certain that Arsenal would draw AC Milan. But now it appears that I was wrong - it looks like the draw is split into seeded teams and unseeded teams, and that as a seeded team Arsenal will only be drawn against one of the unseeded teams.


Hafnarfjördur-Legia winner please. Thanks.

Worst draw for Arsenal would be Fenerbache, Dynamo Kiev, or Dynamo Moscow, because those are probably the three best unseeded teams but also because away legs in Turkey and Russia are no joke.

Personally, I am rooting that Arsenal draw the winner of the Djurgården-Ružomberok 2nd round tie.

The 2nd round of qualifiers is 1/2 way done - results available here. The 2nd round will finish on August 2nd, and the 3rd round of qualifying will take place over 2 legs on August 8/9 and August 22/23.

The draw for the group stage (i.e. Champions League proper) will then take place on August 24th.

***Update 6.13 a.m.***

Arsenal have drawn the winner of Ekranas (Lithuania) -Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia). Dinamo Zagreb lead 4-1 after the first match and the return leg is in Zagreb, so Arsenal will face Dinamo Zagreb.

Full draw here. Liverpool drew Haifa and will have to travel to Israel, which will be a wee bit distracting I would think. The best draw on paper for the neutrals looks like Hamburg-Osasuna.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

FK Ekranas (LTU) / NK Dinamo Zagreb (CRO) winner.

Nope, don't know anything about them.

Well, other than that Dinamo Zagreb was on the other side of that famous match against Red Star Belgrade where hooligan violence on the part of the Red Star fans and police brutality basically signaled the end of Yugoslavia as a country and made a legend out of Boban. (fun times all around, the former Yugoslavia).

But in terms of football? No effing clue.

Anonymous said...

Oh, the Hamburg v. Osasuna is the marquee matchup at this stage. I see Osasuna as an up and coming squad in La Liga. And Hamburg has always been a bridesmade in the Bundesliga (bonus fact: only German team to have played in the Bundesliga every season since the league's creation). Should be fun.

And Real Madrid has signed Ruud......

I have to pull for that motherfucker now? Not cool man, not cool.

Kanu said...

Funny, Moin. First thing I thought of when I read about Horseface was that you would now have to cheer for that diving cheating bastard.

Sorry, man.

Yeah, that's all I know about Zagreb as well - time to see if they have a Wiki page.

Oh, email me at kanu4 at hotmail dot com when you get a chance. I need to ask you about something offline. Thank you sir.

Anonymous said...

Word is that the Haifa home match against Liverpool is going to be played in Cyprus. I can't imagine Liverpool will have too much trouble.

Anonymous said...

Actually, let me take that back.

Apparently, Cyprus is out of the frame because so many Lebanese have left Lebanon and gone to Cyprus to escape the violence.

I'm not sure where you could play the match if not in Israel; I'd guess somewhere in Europe proper is your only option. If they actually play in Israel, that will be one hell of a home-field edge for Haifa.