Anfield awaits draw for this year’s group stages

Aug 30 2007 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL will discover the next stage of their quest to win a sixth European Cup today.

Rafael Benitez’s side are seeded third in the draw for the group stages of this season’s Champions League, to be held in Monaco at 5pm this evening having overcome Toulouse 5-0 on aggregate on Tuesday.

They are joined in pot one by fellow Premier League teams Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal, along with holders AC Milan, Internazionale and Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona. Liverpool will avoid playing any of those teams, but could still be handed a tough assignment with a number of leading teams lying in wait in the other pots.

A worst case scenario would see the Anfield men drawn against French champions Lyon, Bundesliga winners Stuttgart and Ukrainian team Dynamo Kiev.

At the other end of the scale, Liverpool could conceivably face PSV Eindhoven, Steaua Bucharest and Slavia Prague, where Champions League hero Vladimir Smicer now plays.

The draw will go ahead despite Sevilla’s tie with AEK Athens not due to be completed until next Monday after the second leg in Greece was postponed earlier this week following the tragic death of Antonio Puerta.

The potential complication concerns the two clubs’ respective European co-efficients, the rankings system used by UEFA to determine the seedings.

If Sevilla, who won the first leg 2-0, progress, then the UEFA Cup holders would be among the eight second seeds. However, AEK Athens’ co-efficient would put the Greek club in the fourth pot of seeds.

UEFA are expected to confirm today that AEK would be classed as second seeds in the event of winning through.

Should that decision be made, the teams in the draw will be divided as follows:

Pot 1: AC Milan, Barcelona, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United.

Pot 2: Valencia, Lyon, Porto, Sevilla/AEK Athens, PSV Eindhoven, Roma, Benfica, Werder Bremen.

Pot 3: Celtic, Schalke, Stuttgart, Steaua Bucharest, CSKA Moscow, Sporting Lisbon, Lazio, Marseille.

Pot 4: Rangers, Shakhtar Donetsk, Besiktas, Olympiakos, Dynamo Kiev, Fenerbahce, Slavia Prague, Rosenborg.