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The draw for the second group stage of the Champions League takes place tomorrow morning, 10th November, at 11am UK time.
Following last night's matches, the 16 teams are known and are as follows:
Group winners: Runners-up
Real Madrid Spartak Moscow
Valencia Olympique Lyonnais
Sturm Graz Galatasaray
Deportivo La Coruna Panathinaikos
Bayern Munich Paris St German
Anderlecht Man United
Milan Leeds United
Arsenal Lazio
Arsenal will be drawn into a group of 4 with 1 other team from the first list, and any 2 from the first 5 in the second list, but not both the french teams PSG and Lyon
(teams cannot be drawn against teams from the same country, or from the same first stage group). This leaves both Arsenal and Leeds sweating on the 50% probability of drawing Galatasaray.
Naturally, it's more complicated than that. Each of these 2 lists of 8 teams will actually be split into 2 "pots" of 4 before the draw, according to (as we understand it) UEFA rankings from before this year's competition began. Each second-stage group will
consist of one team from each of those 4 pots.
So, the crucial question is, which pot are Arsenal in? And the honest answer is, we're not sure.
At the start of the competition there were plenty of teams ranked higher than Arsenal, but the failure of several big names to win their groups (Lazio, Man Utd) or even get through to the UEFA Cup (Monaco, Juve) means we're in with a shout.
Of the group winners listed above, we're confident that Real,
Bayern, and Valencia are ranked higher than Arsenal (this is the UEFA rankings, not the CNN World soccer top 10, which has Arsenal at number 1!). Of the others, Milan look to be the biggest threat.
Getting into this first pot would be great news, as we could not draw Real, Bayern, or Valencia in the next round.
(update)
Latest indication are not ideal, and confirm my suspicions about Milan. According to end-of season 99-00 rankings, the pots would be split as follows:
1: Bayern, Real, Valencia, Milan
2: Deportivo, Arsenal, Anderlecht, Sturm Graz
3: Lazio, Man Utd, Spartak, PSG
4: Lyon, Galatasaray, Panathinaikos, Leeds
The good news is that this split would reduce our
chances of getting Galatasaray to just over 1 in 3,
(and it'd be even better news for Leeds!).
Please note, until official word comes out, this split is not for definite. Thanks to Julian, Paul, Craig, Charles, and Helge for sending helpful info. This site has the ranking info, but note that we haven't yet confirmed that this info is what UEFA will use. For example, if UEFA were to use current rankings as opposed to those form the start of
the competition, Arsenal would be ranked 4th our of the 8 group winners, and go in the top pot where we belong.
(final update!) we've now found this UEFA page, going into the draw procedure and listing the team rankings. It turns out that we were right with the pot listings above. |
