Aug 28 2008
Champions League Group Stage Draw
One of the more exciting days of the European club football season is the day the Champions League group stage is drawn.
The 32 teams that have qualified for the group stage are drawn into eight, four-team groups. Before that happens, all teams are broken into four pots, labeled A through D, where they are grouped according to a team’s strength (as determined by a formula called a coefficient). Each of the eight groups can have no more than one team from each pot, no more than one team from a country. The eight groups end up pretty even.
The draw is fun because you end up with a series of matches which, in addition to being high profile based on the quality of the teams involved, are rare. In the days before the draw, you start considering the possibilities and potential story lines: Chelsea and Fiorentina in a group, forcing Adrian Mutu to play the club he owes £14 million; Marseille being slotted with Arsenal months after having sold them Samir Nasri, and potentially getting Bayern Munich in the group, so they would have to face Franck Ribery; Barcelona being slotted with a Zenit St. Petersburg team whose star, Andrei Arshavin, so badly wanted to play at Camp Nou; FC Porto being grouped with Inter Milan and facing Jose Mourinho.
Here’s how the eight groups ended up being drawn, with the clubs listed in order of the group they were drawn from: A to D. Continue Reading »
