Messi vs Ronaldo in Champions League group stage
AFP - Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will come up against each other in this season’s Champions League after Barcelona and Juventus were placed in the same group in yesterday’s draw.
The two heavyweights were drawn in Group ‘G’ along with Dynamo Kiev of Ukraine and Ferencvaros as the fourth team.
Messi and Ronaldo will resume the rivalry they developed when the Portuguese superstar was at Real Madrid. Between them they have won 11 of the last 12 Ballons d’or.
English Premier League champions Liverpool, who won the Champions League in 2019, will face Ajax as well as Atalanta in Group ‘D’.
Holders Bayern will face
The draw:
Group ‘A’: Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid, Red Bull Salzburg and Lokomotiv Moscow.
Group ‘B’: Real Madrid, Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan and Borussia Monchengladbach.
Group ‘C’: Porto, Manchester City, Olympiakos and Marseille.
Group ‘D’: Liverpool, Ajax, Atalanta and Midtjylland.
Atletico Madrid and will also have a short trip across the border to Austria to take on Salzburg in Group ‘A’.
The group stage starts on October 20, and all six rounds of games will be crammed into eight weeks in a schedule that is even more packed than usual because of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Group ‘E’: Sevilla, Chelsea, Krasnodar and Rennes.
Group ‘F’: Zenit St. Petersburg, Borussia Dortmund, Lazio and Club Bruges.
Group ‘G’: Juventus, Barcelona, Dynamo Kiev and Ferencvaros.
Group ‘H’: Paris St. Germain, Manchester United, RB Leipzig and Istanbul Basaksehir.