Champions League Last 16 Draw

[Marty]

I quite fancy a trip to Germany actually. When's the away leg?

TBC. We find out later today.

 

[felmani26]

That'll do

 

[Rocksuperstar]

Can we refer to them as SSV Markranstadt instead, just to piss off their owners and fairweather fans?

 

[Marty]

I work under the umbrella of Red Bull global football. Really, the only real complaint I can understand is the changing the crest/club name and their history. The rest of it, who cares?

Because they take players from Salzburg? What's the difference between that and Chelsea loaning 20 players to Vitesse?
Because they market their brand through the team name? Every single club in Europe has a sponsor on their kits. How is Red Bull different to Bayer Leverkusen when it comes to name/logo besides Leverkusen having a longer history?

I really don't understand the hate, especially when City Football Group has far more teams under their umbrella and their owners are legitimately horrid people.

German fans hate them because of the way they've worked around the German model of 51% fan ownership, ploughed ridiculous money into the side and achieved promotions and status that the old club would never have been able to do. They're on the right side of FFP now, or else they would've been out of Europe altogether, but they certainly posted losses when they won their promotions.

 

[L-man]

I quite fancy a trip to Germany actually. When's the away leg?

10th March

 

[easley91]

Weren't Dortmund top of the league when we played them last season? Or at least when the knockout draw took place, and we proceeded to beat them home and away.

 

[Marty]

Weren't Dortmund top of the league when we played them last season? Or at least when the knockout draw took place, and we proceeded to beat them home and away.

When the draw was made, but they'd dropped below Bayern by the time we played them iirc.

 

[TheVoiceofReason]

We could be the only English team left come the next round.

Chelsea are out for sure.

Liverpool will walk through Atleti. Liverpool are one of the very best teams in the world make no mistake.

 

[Ossie85]

Great draw, considering the other options. But's lets not kid ourselves it's gonna be easy.

 

[Marty]

Liverpool will walk through Atleti. Liverpool are one of the very best teams in the world make no mistake.

Nothing walks through Atletico's defence, their problem is they can't score. I think Liverpool will go through but we're talking 1-0 or 2-1 on aggregate at most.

 

[Frozen_Waffles]

Liverpool will walk through Atleti. Liverpool are one of the very best teams in the world make no mistake.

They are, but wait until February, maybe their a bit tired, maybe they have a few injuries. AM could be tough for them.

Also RM always find a way to win.

 

[dirtyh]

Liverpool will walk through Atleti. Liverpool are one of the very best teams in the world make no mistake.

not sure it’ll be as easy as that, especially as Madrid’s strikers won’t miss 3 yard tap ins like Watford’s. At least they’ve got a tie, felt they’d get Atalanta for sure

 

[Shadydan]

Liverpool will walk through Atleti. Liverpool are one of the very best teams in the world make no mistake.

wtf they've had the best defensive record in La Liga 7 years straight and if we know anything Liverpool always struggle to score against a deep block, I think they're probably the worst type of team they can come up against.

 

[riggi]

I quite fancy a trip to Germany actually. When's the away leg?

They need to tell the flight companies first.

 

[coyspurs18]

I work under the umbrella of Red Bull global football. Really, the only real complaint I can understand is the changing the crest/club name and their history. The rest of it, who cares?

Because they take players from Salzburg? What's the difference between that and Chelsea loaning 20 players to Vitesse?
Because they market their brand through the team name? Every single club in Europe has a sponsor on their kits. How is Red Bull different to Bayer Leverkusen when it comes to name/logo besides Leverkusen having a longer history?

I really don't understand the hate, especially when City Football Group has far more teams under their umbrella and their owners are legitimately horrid people.

I listened to a podcast recently that went into detail about how Red Bull was able to circumvent the "50+1" rule to own Leipzig. As @Marty stated the fan ownership is set to be "50+1", basically 50.1%, and that fan ownership is based on paying membership fees. RB basically kept increasing the membership fee until it was over $1,000 (according to what was said on the podcast). This dissuaded most fans from becoming members as the price was too high, allowing RB executives to hold the majority of "fan ownership". In the case of Leverkusen and Wolfsburg being owned by Bayer (drug company) and Volkswagen, they did things the correct way. The "50+1" rule states that if a company has sponsored a team for a minimum 20 years then they can become the primary owner of the club with the fan ownership voting to allow it. In the case with RB they basically out-priced the fans and brought in their guys to toe the company line and approve the ownership to Red Bull. It's no wonder why many would have huge disdain, at minimum, for them.

 

[Gingernut]

wtf they've had the best defensive record in La Liga 7 years straight and if we know anything Liverpool always struggle to score against a deep block, I think they're probably the worst type of team they can come up against.

Be nice if Trippier scores the winner for Atletico tho...

 

[Rocksuperstar]

Liverpool will walk through Atleti. Liverpool are one of the very best teams in the world make no mistake.

I know Salah gets a lot of attention but Mane & Firmino are an absolute unit together and I think they scare a lot of European teams a hundred times more than Salah would.

 

[bubble07]

With this game being 2 months away it's fair to say Leipzig wont be any better than they are now and we should be better and it's all about momentum

 

[coys200]

We have an 11 day break before the first game as winter break. Nice little warm weather camp perfect.

 

[Marty]

First leg
Weekend off before
Chelsea away after with Chelsea having midweek off.

Second leg
Burnley away before
Man United home after - United will have a Europa tie on the Thursday before if they beat Brugge.

Not liking the timing of the Chelsea game, otherwise not bad.