Well it is finally here, the first round of Champions League fixtures take place today and tomorrow with Groups A-D kicking off today and Groups E-H kicking off 24 hours later. Today I will look at the first games involving the two Manchester clubs, Real Madrid, Juventus and current Champions, Bayern Munich.
Group A:
Manchester United host Bayer Leverkusen in what will be another first for Manchester United fans. The competition has been in existence since 1955 when it was known as the European Cup, but has only been in the familiar Champions League form since 1992. This will be the first running of the competition with anyone other than Sir Alex Ferguson in charge of the Red Devils.
Bayer Leverkusen will not be an easy first game for David Moyes and the matches will not get any easier either with Real Sociedad and Turkish side Shakhtar Donetsk completing the group.
Predictions: Manchester United 1-2 Leverkusen, Real Sociedad 2-0 Donetsk.
Group B:
Now this is certainly one of the so called ‘Group of Death’. Juventus travel to FC Copenhagen who have ex Aston Villa defender Olof Mellberg. The current Danish Champions will certainly be punching above their weight if they do manage to qualify from the group but stranger things have happened in football. Back in the 2006/07 running of the competition they managed to beat Manchester United 1-0 against the odds a year before they would lift the trophy again. Eclipsing that though was keeping Barcelona to a 0-0 draw in the 2010/11 season, the season the Spanish side went on to win the competition, beating United 3-1 in the final.
This time they will not face Barcelona but will face Real Madrid who kick off their campaign with a difficult trip to Turkey against Galatasaray. Madrid and Juve will be penciled in by most to qualify from the group but personally I think Juve may lose out to Copenhagen. You heard it here first.
Prediction: FC Copenhagen 1-1 Juventus, Galatasaray 1-2 Real Madrid
Group C:
This is one of the groups in which an argument can be made for any team to finish 1st or 4th. Benfica kick off against Anderlecht and Olympiacos start against Paris St Germain. New PSG manager Laurent Blanc will be hoping his side can keep hold of the ball a little better against their hosts. In contrast the Olympiacos coach, Michel got all philosophical with his approach to the game stating ‘Football has taught me that he who plays for a draw invites a defeat‘.
Prediction: Benfica 2-0 Anderlecht, Olympiacos 0-1 PSG
Group D:
Current Champions League and Euro Cup Champions kick off their defense against CSKA Moscow later today and it will be interesting to see how Pep Guardiola improves on perfection. They should have too much for Moscow and coming off a 2-0 win at home to Hannover 96 at the weekend. Certainly I expect Captain and Goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev will be kept busy for the full 90 minutes. The other game see Manchester City travel to Czech side, Viktoria Plzen. New City boss, Manuel Pellegrini, will be hoping to do better than his predecessor Roberto Mancini. This will be the third consecutive time City have started a Champions League but their previous runs all ended at the group stage.
Prediction: Munich 2-0 CSKA, Plzen 1-3 City.
