Champions League Preview: Chelsea, Bayern, Madrid face tricky away ties
This week’s football will be dominated by the first knock-out matches in the UEFA Champions League.
Many critics of the group stage point out that it was created to maximise revenue but does a poor job at creating excitement as the big clubs tend to have enough games to overcome surprise defeats. Football is far more exciting when a giant faces elimination, is it not?
That process starts this week when three of world football’s mightiest board planes to face tricky first legs. However in two of those cases, there is a recent reminder that, despite the sums of money involved, football is not the most important thing on the planet.
Bayern may have hammered eight unanswered goals against Hamburg this weekend but a trip to Shakhtar Donetsk presents dangers both of a footballing kind and a far more serious matter. Donetsk lies in Eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region, the part where ethnic Russians predominate.
The area has seen separatist tensions and a large amount of fatal violence as the Ukraine government tries to prevent Moscow backed gunmen from creating a new state and seceding from Kiev, with the final intent being to unite the territory into Russia.
One does not need reminding that a passenger airline was shot down over the Donbass region, in which Donetsk lies, by the same Russian backed militias.
Such is the risk that the game has been moved from Donetsk to Lviv, some 800 miles away. Shakhtar have been unable to play at home since May domestically. Their home stadium has been bombed and is in need of repair anyway.
The horror of that bombing became widely known when a video of an innocent young girl walking around the stadium went viral as a bomb landed.
(Warning: Some may find the video disturbing)
Such is the level of tension that UEFA has decreed that Russian and Ukrainian sides cannot meet in European competition. although that only affects the Europa League this year, as no Russian sides survived the group stages.
Bayern are not the only big club visiting a city which has seen horrific violence recently.
Chelsea visit Paris, a city still scarred by the brutal murders of journalists at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, the murder of a policewoman and a subsequent racist attack on a kosher supermarket by ISIS terrorists.
Not that visiting Londoners are unaware of the threat of terror. Few will forget the horror of the July 7 underground bombings.
On the field, the Blues have been extending their league at the top of the EPL as Manchester City have faltered. Their exit from the FA Cup takes a little pressure off their fixture list and the club had the weekend off to prepare for the short trip. That could prove key against a Paris side who slipped up at home to lowly Caen at the weekend in a 2-2 draw which cost them the chance to go joint top in Ligue Un.
Luckily for them both Lyon and Marseille also drew so they remain in the hunt but as a confidence booster for a match with Chelsea, the result was very damaging. Elimination may be even more damaging for coach Laurent Blanc who seems to lack the total confidence of the owners Qatar Sports Investments.
Ex Chelsea defender David Luiz may play against his former club while further spice is added by the fact that Jose Mourinho is said to have rejected overtures from PSG twice in the past.
On Wednesday, FC Porto visit Basel in Switzerland and Real Madrid take their bandwagon of superstars to Gelsenkirchen where they visit off form Schalke. Schalke lost 1-0 to Eintracht Frankfurt at the weekend surrendering third place to Borussia Mönchengladbach in the process. They have scored just three goals in their last five league matches.
Porto and Basel clash in the fourth tie this week, with both having a superb chance to go further having avoided the bigger sides.
Despite the fact that football can sometimes pale into insignificance compared to matters of life and death, it is to be hoped that the players, their saves and their goals dominate the headlines this week.
