England’s best may miss final shake-up
If, for the attentive reader, there’s more than a hint of deja vu about that opening paragraph, it might just be because, barring the insertion of Milan for Berlin, those were precisely the words which appeared on these pages almost exactly 12 months ago to the day, on the morning after the 2014/15 Champions League draw.
And apart from the inestimable advantage you can’t be sued for self- plagiarism — hell, I’ve tried — recycling a chunk of a year-old article seems entirely justified on the basis (a) the prediction was proved correct and (b) nothing which has happened in the interim to suggest it won’t come true again this time around.
The Official European Football Groups:@ChampionsLeague & @EuropaLeague pic.twitter.com/EVImBr0e8T
— fanatix (@therealfanatix) August 28, 2015
Last season, for the second time in three years, there was no English representative in the last eight of the Champions League, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal all going out in the round of 16 after Real Madrid and Basel had already done for Liverpool in the group stage.
There was no Manchester United last year, of course, but after Liverpool’s brief and ultimately bitter season in the sun, the red empires have now exchanged places, United’s immediate reward for suddenly cutting loose and dismissing Club Brugge on Wednesday night a group draw that can best be described as generous.
Barcelona’s season of domestic and European triumph, coupled with UEFA’s decision to change the seeding process, meant that Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven occupied a position in yesterday’s day of destiny in Monaco roughly equivalent to that played by Wales in the recent World Cup draw – a top seed preceived by many to be a cut below the rest.
Or so Manchester United will hope, as they eagerly anticipate a thousand ‘Depay Back’ headlines. CSKA Moscow should prove manageable too but Wolfsburg, runners-up in the Bundesliga, could be the bogey team as fourth seeds, even if Manchester City inadvertently do their neighbours a favour in the meantime by divesting the German side of Kevin De Bruyne.
For that matter, despite all the talk of a group of death, City can’t have too many complaints about their draw, even if there were kinder alternatives on offer. Juventus might have been last year’s beaten finalists but they can no longer call on the services of Pirlo, Tevez or Vidal. And City, at their very best, shouldn’t be frightened of Europa League winners Seville or Borussia Monchengladbach who finished third in the Bundesliga.
But there’s the rub. Even with their stellar line-up, City’s penchant for blowing cold as well as hot means there’s no guarantee that they will maintain their strong start to the Premier League let alone transfer that form into the more unforgiving European arena, where the representatives of the self-styled ‘greatest league in the world’ have repeatedly been found wanting in recent seasons.
While Arsenal should escape the group stage on the tails of their old pals Bayern Munich, Chelsea are entitled to fancy progressing as group winners ahead of Maccabi Tel Aviv, Dynamo Kiev and Jose Mourinho’s old flame Porto. But there again, that is to assume that their underwhelming start to the domestic season is a case of temporary rustiness rather than the manifestation of some more deep-rooted structural problem at Stamford Bridge.
In truth, it’s hard to predict anything based on the short-term weather patterns which characterise football at the start of any new season. But if we’re to stand back and study the bigger picture, there was certainly nothing in last year’s below par Premier League campaign – and attendant short-lived European adventures – to engender confidence that there’s the kind of climate change afoot in the English game which can put it firmly back on level terms with the best of Spain and Germany any time soon.
On which note, probably the most rewarding aspect of yesterday’s draw for the Premier League entrants is that they all managed to avoid defending champions Barcelona – at least for now.
Instead, that dubious privilege is shared by Bayer Levekusen, Roma and BATE Borisov. So, on reflection, probably just as well Dundalk, despite a terrific effort, didn’t see their way past BATE and beyond, eh?
