This Thursday signifies an important day on my football calendar, the moment where Liverpool Football Club will eventually learn their three opponents in the Champions League Group Stage. Most fans couldn’t care less, and truth be told it really isn’t that big of a deal. When a club ends up hoisting Ol’ Big Ears at the end of the season, few supporters recall who their club played in the group stage to begin the competition. I, on the other hand, relish the early stages and try not to miss a single match throughout the tournament. And tomorrow beginning at noon Eastern time, we shall learn what early hurdles will stand in our way on that road to a seventh European Cup.
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The Champions League draw involves a basic process whereby all thirty-two remaining clubs are placed into one of four pots. They are then “randomly” selected into one of the eight groups, making sure that no two clubs from the same country will be in the same group. Pot 1 consists of the current domestic title holders from each of the top six European leagues (Manchester City from England, Atletico Madrid from Spain, Inter Milan from Italy, Bayern Munich from Germany, Lille from France, and Sporting Club from Portugal). The current Champions League and Europa League winners (Chelsea and Villareal respectively) complete the pot to give us the top seeds in each group. The remaining twenty-four clubs are then seeded based on a coefficient determined from a convoluted formula that only the brainiacs of UEFA could figure out. This coefficient is based on recent performances in only European competitions, so domestic domination matters not. When Liverpool returned to Champions League competition in 2017, it had been only the second time since 2009-10 that they had qualified for this elite tournament, and that first time had been an embarrassing exit following the group stage in 2014. Their coefficient was so weak they were placed into Pot 3, where the dangerous possibility of getting into a “Group of Death” scenario exists. Luckily that never happened for Liverpool, and continued success over the next few seasons have firmly entrenched Liverpool into Pot 2, where they will likely remain when they don’t qualify for Pot 1 with silverware.
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You may be asking yourselves why anyone should really care about this. I mostly care because I love to watch Liverpool play in the European competitions. It thrills me more than any other tournament. The Premier League is the staple, and I love how unpredictable that league can be every week. But it’s a grind. A long, drawn out season watching many of the same clubs, with the same tactics and players, trying to snatch a result against a team of higher quality. There are only so many matches each season which will grab my attention and make me rearrange my schedule to ensure I will be watching it live. The Champions League is different. With only six matches played to determine who advances from the Group Stage, the window to qualify for the final sixteen is miniscule. Every match matters.
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The other thing I love about the Champions League is the freshness of it. For the most part, you get a new experience never seen before. Like watching Austrian champions Red Bull Salzburg, a club with players you’ve never heard of and an American coach that somehow find a way to storm back from a three-goal deficit to equalize at Anfield (Side note… Mo Salah would eventually score the winner in a 4-3 thriller which makes that a more satisfying memory to include in this story)
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Results carry much more weight in the Champions League. Players can’t “go through the motions” like they might appear to do on the early Saturday kickoff at Burnley. It’s a strange personal paradox for me. Ask me my preference, and I’ll always pick winning the Premier League as top priority. However, I’d much rather watch Liverpool play in the Champions League. Maybe it helps that these matches are played in the middle of the week, conveniently at a time adjacent on the calendar to my afternoon work appointment located just down the street from my home pub. No, that definitely helps. It just seems like there’s much more at stake in that moment, where any mistake (like an Adrian missed clearance against Atletico) costs so much. Not winning away at Crystal Palace in November, and no one bats an eye. Losing at Red Star Belgrade in November, and the entire Liverpool fanbase goes into panic mode. There’s so much riding on every match. It’s what makes that competition the best.
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You may not have heard the news, but earlier this year UEFA announced a major change in the Champions League format beginning in the 2024-25 season. It’s a major overhaul that will take some getting used to. The total number of teams will increase by four to thirty-six, and the total number of preliminary games for each club will also increase by four to ten total (five home and five away). The biggest change comes in the formation of a single table. No longer will there be eight groups, rather one single ladder like we see in the Premier League. There will still be a knockout stage, but it will only involve the top twenty-four clubs based on total points. There is still much to learn about this new format and how it will affect the quality of the product. It’s hard to think that individual matches will carry as much weight as they currently do. Will there still be great drama? Miracle moments like the great Gerrard goal late against Olympiakos in December 2004 (without which Liverpool don’t advance to the knockout stage and eventually win their fifth European Cup)? Moments like that late point-blank save by Alisson against Napoli in December 2018 (without which Liverpool don’t advance to the knockout stage and eventually win their sixth European Cup)? We simply don’t know yet. But one thing I do know is that we won’t get the drama waiting for the draw to see who our favorite club will face in the Group Stage. After tomorrow, we will only get to have this feeling twice more before the new format takes effect.
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Let’s forget about the future and focus on the now. Tomorrow is an intriguing draw, and somewhat unexpected. Who could’ve predicted that none of Real Madrid/Barcelona, Paris St. Germain, and Juventus would win their domestic league last season? As a result, all four of those clubs have been placed in Pot 2 along with Liverpool. This means we can’t face them as opponents in the Group Stage. Even Sporting Club of Lisbon won the Portugal league for the first time in nineteen years, the first time neither Porto nor Benfica won that league. All of this is great news for us.
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For the purposes of this story, I’d like to take a brief moment to consider the possible opponents Liverpool could draw from each pot. I’d like to offer an opinion as to who I’d like to see Liverpool get drawn against in the competition. I’m not necessarily talking about which teams I think give us the best chance to advance, but that certainly does helps. Let’s start with Pot 1. Since Liverpool cannot get placed in the same group with another English club, there are only six possibilities with both Chelsea and Manchester City not eligible to be in our group. That leaves Bayern Munich, Sporting Club, Lille, Inter Milan, Villareal and Atletico Madrid. Even though I don’t fear any of these clubs and fancy our chances to win the group regardless of who gets selected, it’s not an easy choice to pick. Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid are the two scariest clubs in terms of talent, and we’ve played both in the knockout rounds of the two most recent editions of this tournament. I’d take any of the other four without hesitation, however my choice from Pot 1 would be Lille. I know very little about their club and players, except to know that they had to be pretty decent to finish ahead of PSG in the French Ligue 1. I also know that they sold us Divock Origi back in the summer of 2014, and for that we should all be forever thankful. We’ve only faced them once in our history, in the 2010 Europa League (where we advanced 3-1 on aggregate). The lack of knowledge and experience gives them a freshness that will be nice to see this fall.
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Pot 3 is more intriguing, because you’ve got some talented young clubs with great history making their mark in the competition. My choice from this pot will be determined mostly by process of elimination. Four of these clubs we faced in recent Champions Leagues, so I immediately remove them from consideration. Those are the two Red Bull clubs (Leipzig and Salzburg), Ajax, and Atalanta. Porto and Benfica always seem to figure out a way to climb into the knockout stage, and I’m not particularly fond of the Portuguese style of play. They would be glorious places to visit for an away fixture, but I don’t see that happening in my future. So that’s not going to be a consideration. That leaves Shakhtar Donetsk and Zenit St. Petersburg, which makes the choice simple for one main reason. Dejan Lovren. There’s no player I want to see return to Anfield more than Dejan Lovren, the current captain of the Russian champions. I know very little about any other player on their squad, but my mates know the soft spot I have in my heart for the Croatian Sensation. I’m sure many will scoff at my selection, concerned about the mid-week travel of the players flying from England to Russia. But that’s why we have a large squad. I couldn’t care less about the match played at Krestovsy Stadium, other than it possibly giving our lads a sneak-peek at the venue before we return for the final on May 28, 2022. I want to see Lovren try to defend his best friend Mo Salah at Anfield. I want to see him cutting it up pre-match with Klopp. But mostly I want to see the Kop salute him as he takes the pitch, as they always do for the loyal players that gave their best even with that may not have been good enough at the time.
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Pot 4 is the wildcard pot. It would seem that we should be happy with anyone in that pot, which is why they are amongst the weakest in the competition. Teams include AC Milan, Besiktas from Turkey, Dynamo Kyiv from Ukraine, Belgium’s Club Brugge, VfL Wolfsburg from Germany, and two of the greatest club names in all of European football: Young Boys of Switzerland (which makes me chuckle even though I know it shouldn’t), and Sheriff Tiraspol (the first Moldovan squad to ever qualify for the Champions League). Since I get to choose my opponent in this exercise, I am selfishly selecting the Swedish champions Malmö Fotbollförening, more commonly called Malmö FF. The only reason I want to root for this team is because that city used to be the global headquarters for my employer, who used to be a kit sponsor for this club. One of my regrets in life was not forking over the cash online to acquire the Malmö FF kit back in 2006, with my employer’s logo splattered across the front, when I knew what a great story it would ultimately become. Tomorrow they could become Liverpool’s next Champions League opponent.
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There you have it, my perfect Champions League group: Lille, Liverpool, Zenit St. Petersburg, and Malmö FF. Of course, you realize now that this article has effectively guaranteed none of those clubs will have to face Liverpool this fall. That’s just how this shit works. I make a prediction and it doesn’t come true. Just like how Manchester City will most certainly draw Sheriff Tiraspol. Because the Moldovans are the closest thing to the Midvale School for the Gifted in this competition, and we all know Manchester City can never get placed into a “Group of Death” scenario. I think it’s written somewhere in UEFA’s by-laws. That’s just how that shit works. Regardless, I am not worried one iota about who we play, when we play, and how we advance. I am just excited to turn on that television tomorrow and watch legendary old men fondle a bunch of cold balls in a ceramic bowl while millions watch live. When it’s all over, whomever Liverpool must play, I will look forward to blocking my calendar with all of those “work appointments” in downtown Raleigh for Tuesdays and Wednesdays this fall.
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YNWA,
Ken Kendra
The opinions expressed in this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect that of LFC Raleigh or Liverpool Football Club. I am the author of the book “Walking Through The Storm” available on Amazon, Kindle, World Soccer Shop, and other book depository outlets. Follow me on Twitter: @kjkendra11