Champions League Last 16 Draw

[stonebrow]

Early days... Early days. Give it a year and a bit.

Who cares...we’ll have a couple of trophies by then anyway!

 

[daryl hannah]

I was happy that we drew RB Leipzig, until I saw where they are in the league & what form they are in...

The choice comes down to drawing a very very good team, a really very tricky team, a really very tough team, or thoroughly very decent side.

Given the options, I say bring all of them on...

 

[kaz Hirai]

Ajax all over again, great attacking, young team.
Hopefully our experience allows us to control the situation better this time

 

[Hakkz]

Ajax all over again, great attacking, young team.
Hopefully our experience allows us to control the situation better this time

I think they might have the same problem as Ajax too. Young, attacking but also naive.

 

[Guernman]

There are some immense players in the CL knock-outs this year -

Messi is for me the greatest of all time, but others give it to Cristiano Ronaldo. Then you've got the likes of Mbappe, who just beat Messi's record as the youngest player to get to 15 CL goals, not to mention the rather brilliant England no.9 who recently became the fastest player to 20 goals in the entire history of the Champions League...

We have avoided the first three, and the fourth fella plays for us, so I'd say it was a good draw

 

[philll]

I'm glad I saw the stat which said the last time we won something, RB Leipzig didn't even exist.

 

[Nicki78]

Sorry if it’s already been said elsewhere but are dates confirmed yet?

 

[philll]

Sorry if it’s already been said elsewhere but are dates confirmed yet?

 

[Nicki78]

Thanks

 

[Adam456]

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.

This is kind of funny now (and I include myself in this). In the Premiership years...





Firstly we hated Man U because they had more money than everybody else put together (despite a good chunk of their success being due to choosing a great manager and bringing through a golden generation of youth players) and that nobody else had a chance

Then we hated Chelsea for buying their way from small selling club to Premiership giant

Then we hated the Sky 4 and said nobody else could get a look in due to them dominating the live games coverage

Then we hated Citeh for coming along and buying success and making it a big 5

Then we loved FFP because we thought it would stop the Chelseas and Citehs and PSGs

Then we hated FFP because clubs cheated it

Then we hated FFP because clubs stopped cheating it as much and people thought that there was no way to break the glass ceiling, even with a big cash injection

Then we didn't care about it so much because Spurs started qualifying for the CL, started building a mega stadium and the big 5 became 6

Then we hated the oil clubs because we couldn't quite win a trophy over them with our resources

Then we hated Leicester because they won the premiership on 50% of our budget but played horrible, negative football

And then we hated the fact that they would never, ever, get anywhere remotely near it again

Now we hate Leicester because they are 2nd only to CL holders Liverpool, going into Xmas week and we can't blame it on negative football any more

And now we hate Leipzig for rising through the divisions and being top of the league while being owned by a major fizzy drinks company and sidestepping the 51% rule when fans here would be over the moon in the same situation !

 

[bubble07]

I was happy that we drew RB Leipzig, until I saw where they are in the league & what form they are in...

Lucky then that we play them in 8 weeks and not this week

 

[philll]

Lucky then that we play them in 8 weeks and not this week

Indeed. Dortmund were 9 points clear when the draw took place last season and but they went on a pretty bad run from the end of January.

 

[worcestersauce]

However good or bad Leipzig are they ain't Barcelona, Juventus or PSG so all in all it has to be a good draw for us. A very good chance of getting to the quarter finals and then, as we know, anything can happen.

 

[SandroClegane]

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.

The 50+1/being owned by RB being the main reason for all the hate is pretty funny to me, especially since most Leipzig supporters are proud they finally have a successful club to support.

Meanwhile, supporters of other clubs get far more upset about Red Bull owning teams than they do for:
-Teams being sponsored by betting companies
-Teams being sponsored by payday loan companies
-Teams owned by oil barons
-Teams being owned by slave trading countries & murderous regimes

Glad our priorities are in check...

 

[JCRD]

The overall set of fixtures is actually reall damn good, so many interesting games, match ups, clashes of style and also barring perhaps Napoli being beaten by Barca all the others are in the balance... in my view...

Maybe PSG also beating Dortmund but you never know with their track record of choking harder than iHeather

 

[Armstrong_11]

A decent draw for us, and a few really good matchups to look forward too.

looking forward to the matches.

 

[C0YS]

Ajax all over again, great attacking, young team.
Hopefully our experience allows us to control the situation better this time

Not as good as Ajax, or yet to prove it. But a very dangerous team. They were not particularly confident in a very weak CL group, were lucky to finish top. They are a very good young team who could go far in the competition but they are still one of the best teams we could have drawn against.

In the league they are on great form winning the last 6 until you realise that 5 of those teams are in the bottom half of the table, and the other is 9th, just one position ahead of that point. Against the top half their record reads w2 d3 l2 which isn't particularly impressive.

They are a dangerous team who could give anyone a nose bleed on their day. But we shouldn't overhype them yet. Try and keep it tight away and do them at home. If we are not careful they can really pile on the goals, but it's no harder than us vs dortmund last season.

 

[C0YS]

The 50+1/being owned by RB being the main reason for all the hate is pretty funny to me, especially since most Leipzig supporters are proud they finally have a successful club to support.

Meanwhile, supporters of other clubs get far more upset about Red Bull owning teams than they do for:
-Teams being sponsored by betting companies
-Teams being sponsored by payday loan companies
-Teams owned by oil barons
-Teams being owned by slave trading countries & murderous regimes

Glad our priorities are in check...

Matte, in the German context not being fan owned is both completely unfair and considered an existential risk for other clubs. I wish we were fan owned here and football clubs weren't shitty brands.

For me the last two are things that I get more annoyed about and believe me most football fans with an issue with Red Bull have an issue with the latter two. Most people in the UK also don't like MK Dons, and MK dons have done much less wrong then RB Leipzig.

Thing is football was a community run and based game. This is only very slightly true in the PL now. The game is gone and it sucks but we continue. But in Germany it's still something fought for and so it should be.

 

[George94]

Not sure if mentioned already, but read that Timo Werner has a €30m release cause and is expected to leave in January...but Red Bull probably going to replace with with that Erling Braut Håland from the other Red Bull, who looks a bloody good striker...

 

[jezz]

I imagine RB will be very happy to draw us.
Tough game