Courtesy: UEFA.com
All soccer fans around the World were facing Monaco on Thursday at 12pm EST where the Groups for the 2013/14 Champions League would be drawn. Once again the procedure, which could take 15 minutes was drawn out for a full hour with voting for UEFA Best Player in Europe for the 2012/13 season.
To the draw and a good and bad surprise for me personally was the introduction of Billy McNeill. Now for those of you who do not know Billy, he played for Scotland and Celtic, which is actually why he was in Monaco to start with. McNeill was Captain of Celtic when they became the first British side to lift the trophy, before Liverpool, before United and a long time before Chelsea. For me though I will remember him as the Manchester City manager of the mid 1980’s who took a recently relegated City side, stabilized them and then got them promotion. It was his work in the transfer market along with bringing Paul Simpson and Paul Moulden into the first team.
His last job in football was 15 years ago and he had successful triple heart bypass surgery in 1997. It was good to see him on stage and involved in the event because his Celtic side lifted the trophy in the same City as this years Final will be, Lisbon. It was also quite sad though because it seems sometimes we forget that our heroes age also. We assume they stay forever as we remembered them, wrapped up in cotton wool and this was a poignant reminder as the once tough Scot now looked every bit the frail 73 year old he has now become.
So Billy McNeill was involved with selecting teams from Pot A while this years Final Ambassador and also ex favorite of mine, Luis Figo was in charge of selecting which group the drawn team would go in. Figo would stay on stage for the duration but McNeill would be replaced by Johan Cryuff, then Michael Owen and finally Paulo Sousa for selection of Pots B, C and D respectively.
For Michael Owen I think it is fair to say I have seen him more times in the last three weeks than in his last three years playing, but that is a harsh injury joke and not like me at all.
GROUP A: Man Utd, Shahktar, Bayer Leverkusen, Real Sociadad.
GROUP B: Real Madrid, Juventus, Galatasary, FC Copenhagen.
GROUP C: Benfica, PSG, Olympiacos, Anderlecht.
GROUP D: Bayern Munich, CSKA Moscow, Man City, Victoria Plzen
GROUP E: Chelsea, Schalke, FC Basel, Steaua.
GROUP F: Arsenal, Marseilles, Dortmund, Napoli
GROUP G: Porto, Atletico Madrid, Zenit, Austrai Wien
GROUP H: Barcelona, AC Milan, Ajax, Celtic
Instantly looking at that your eye goes to Group H with poor Celtic having to battle Barcelona, AC Milan and Ajax in what must be this years Group of Death. Certainly the Scottish club could not have hand picked a tougher test but the truth is all these teams are tough.
So what do you think of your teams Group? Comment below. For me I think I am reasonably happy with my team, Manchester City. The Group consists of the current Champions sure, but it certainly could have been a lot tougher
