Champions League redraw has a sense of deja vu for holders Chelsea
Life got no easier second time around for England’s Champions League representativesafterUEFAwas forcedintoanembarrassingredrawing of the fixtures for the round of 16.
ManchesterUnitedmustgo to Atletico Madrid, Liverpool will face Inter Milan, and Manchester City will tackle Sporting Lisbon in the knockout stages while Chelsea will continuetheirtitledefenceagainst
Lille – the only repeat fixture fromthevoideddrawcompleted earlier in the day. UEFA was left red-faced after a series of errorsfirsttimearoundforced themtogoagain,andtherewas bad news for several clubs as their assignments began to look much more difficult.
Liverpoolhadinitiallybeen drawn against Salzburg, the firstAustrianclubtomakeitto the round of 16 in the ChampionsLeague,butmustnowhead to Milan to take on the Serie A leaders, while Real Madrid swappedatiewithBenficafora meetingwithParisStGermain.
It seemed somehow fitting that United should be drawn against Atletico given what had happened in the morning. After first being erroneously paired with Villarreal, a side they had already faced in Group F, United were mistakenly left out of the pot of possible opponents for Diego
Simeone’s side.
The debacle led to an apology from UEFA, who blamed the problems on “the software ofanexternalserviceprovider” which had given officials the wrong information on which clubs were eligible to face one another.
Confusion began when United were paired with Villarreal – the side they beat to the top of their group by a single point.
UEFAdeputygeneralsecretary Giorgio Marchetti apologised for the “technical issue our draw is experiencing” before asking former Arsenal forward Andrey Arshavin to try again, and this time it was neighbours Manchester City who were paired with the Yellow Submarine.
But the problems did not stop there.
As United’s drawing was a mistake, they should still have been potential opponents for Atletico. UEFA’s head of club competitions Michael Heselschwerdt began collecting balls to put in the pot, but compounded the error by appearing to take a ball from Liverpool’s pot rather than United’s.
Atletico were ultimately paired with Bayern Munich, butconsideringtheseriesoferrors,UEFAhadnochoicebutto declare the draw void.