’Pool facing fixtures nightmare

AS Liverpool await their Champions League fate, the prospect of a nightmare fixture pile-up before the season has even started faces the European Cup winners.

And it could see them playing the prestigious European Super Cup final and the second leg of a Champions League third qualifying round tie inside four days.

It has emerged that the English FA are not pressing UEFA to allow Liverpool into the group stages of next season’s Champions League, and are only concerned with getting the Anfield club back into the competition as holders.

Informed sources at Soho Square are insisting that Liverpool can only expect to be involved at some stage of the qualifying rounds, if UEFA agree.

Having finished fifth in the Premiership, Rafael Benitez’s squad are facing life in the UEFA Cup unless Europe’s powerbrokers come up with a solution to the problem of the Champions League holders not being able to defend their crown.

Now UEFA chief Lennart Johansson has made it clear he favours Liverpool starting the competition from scratch rather than being given the other option available of a wild card into the group stages as number one seed.

That seems highly unlikely to be the outcome of discussions between UEFA executive committee members this week, who are expected to come up with a solution to the problem which has dominated European football since Liverpool’s victory in Istanbul last month against AC Milan.

Johansson says: “In my opinion Liverpool should be in from the very beginning - they will have to go through all the competition.”

If that is the decision then Liverpool could find themselves in a first qualifying round tie in early July when they are supposedly in their Swiss pre-season training camp, which will throw their preparations into chaos.

They are supposed to be in Japan on July 27 playing against Shimizu S Pulse and three days later against Kashima Antlers, which will clash with the second qualifying round.

Liverpool are due back in the UK on July 31 from a tour they are already financially committed to.

If UEFA tell them to start in the third qualifying round, the second leg will clash with the week of the European Super Cup Final against CSKA Moscow in Monaco on August 26.

If Liverpool are forced into this stage, they will face a second leg on either Tuesday or Wednesday of that week with the Super Cup on the Friday.

The whole problem has become a minefield for UEFA and now threatens to ruin Liverpool’s lucrative pre-season tour as well as boss Benitez’s build-up to the new season, with the Anfield men due back for pre-season training a week earlier that usual on June 27.

Meanwhile Tennis great Martina Navratilova refused to back calls for Liverpool to be allowed to defend their Champions League title.

Nine-times Wimbledon winner Navratilova, who yesterday visited Anfield to see the trophy, said it was their own fault that they did not qualify and it was too late to change the rules.

She said: “I think the rules are pretty obvious.

“You have four teams from England that can go through and Liverpool didn’t make it.

“They should concentrate on the Premier League instead. Just because they won it, it doesn’t mean they should bend the rules.

“I think a champion should be given the chance to defend their title, but at the moment, the rules are the rules.

“Liverpool did it to themselves. They shot themselves in the foot.”