UEFA Champions League action on Tuesday saw some of Europe’s most famous clubs advance to the knockout stages of the competition, which begins in February next year.
It was week 5 of the Group Stage and spent in Spain, it must be said that Manchester United and Villarreal, despite being two of the teams that advanced, produced a fairly boring and uneventful goalless draw. The only good moments came in the first half when a shot by Portuguese striker Ronaldo produced a great save by Villareal goalkeeper Diego López. López deflected the ball to the crossbar. Later, Utd and England star striker Wayne Rooney produced a cross that was deflected into the danger area but came to nothing as the Villareal Capdevila man managed to clear the ball safely.
The same player, Capdevilla, was also involved in the most unpleasant incident of the night. With just 6 minutes left in the game, he pounced and produced a rather ugly tackle on another of Man Utd’s star players, Ronaldo. Cadevilla rightly received a red card from the referee and went to shower early.
Unfortunately, it was the end of the road for Glasgow Celtic and Gordon Strachan. Celtic, in the same Group E as Manchester Utd, must have thought they could go to Aalborg and get a good result. A win was Celtic’s only chance of staying alive in the competition. However, there will be no more European nights at Celtic’s Park Head stadium this season. Not even the consolation of playing in Europe’s second competition, the UEFA Cup, will remain. Celtic will finish last in Group E thanks to a 2-1 loss against AaB Aalborg, who do not have many fans. Not many people would have put too much money on Celtic finishing bottom of this group when the draw was first made in the summer.
However, the match started well for Celtic, who were leading 1 – 0. But tragedy struck with minutes to go, as Celtic’s Gary Caldwell was only able to turn the ball into his own net after a move of goal mouth Tears of sadness in the east end of Glasgow, while no doubt tears of joy in the west end of the city!
They moved into Group F where Lyon, the perennial leaders of their domestic French league, beat Italian side Fiorentina. Therefore, Lyon also advances to the round of 16 of the competition. Not surprisingly, Bayern Munich will join Lyon in the final stages after they beat Romanian side Steau Bucharest at the Allianz Arena. All the big teams are certainly lined up for battle when the Champions League reaches the sudden death stages.
The qualifying situation is no different in Group G, as both Arsenal, who fell finalist in 2006 against Barcelona in Paris, and FC Porto, winner in 2004 when their manager was José Mourinho before he arrived at the West End of London to manage Chelsea, both made it to the round of 16 with wins over Dynamo Kyiv and Fenerbache respectively.
However, Arsenal left him a bit late against kyiv and the winner came just 3 minutes from the end of the game, scored by Bendtner. That must have been a huge relief for Arsene Wenger and all things Arsenal. Since their excellent Premier League win against Man Utd a few weeks ago, which silenced some critics at the time, there has been nothing but bad news and bad press for Arsenal with more defeats and the William Gallas affair, which resulted in being stripped of the captaincy.
Finally, on Tuesday night, two more of Europe’s “Big Guns” made it through safely with the final week of the group stage to spare. Both Real Madrid, 9-time champion, and Juventus of Italy confirmed their place in the round of 16 after Real beat BATE Borisov and Juventus drew 0 – 0 against Zenit St. Petersburg, current Cup champion from UEFA. Unfortunately, the result eliminated Zenit and it now looks likely that they can defend the crown they won last season in Manchester against Glasgow Rangers. Though that probably won’t be much comfort to them.
