No, it's the same as it's always been. CL Tuesday/Wednesday, EL Thursday in the same midweek.I listened to a podcast saying that the europa will be played on the same days as the CL next season. Can anyone confirm/deny this?
Professional athletes have to take so many precautions as it is that I assume this will be the case. Private planes for the squad, only allowed to be sealed off at their hotel or training/playing in the stadium, all precautions followed.I wonder if governments would be flexible letting just the squads travel and quarantine to play games.
That’s been the case with Madrid for the City game hasn’t itI wonder if governments would be flexible letting just the squads travel and quarantine to play games.
No, it's the same as it's always been. CL Tuesday/Wednesday, EL Thursday in the same midweek.
Lmao how is that fair
Lmao how is that fair
I'd be surprised if it's used at all - no more than a contingency measure. In my opinion, the major countries will make exemptions if needed to allow matches to go ahead. And others will either do similar, or be able to find a neutral venue. Even for smaller teams, they'll either think they have a chance of going through with home advantage, or be playing someone so big (e.g. us) that they can probably make a bit off TV money - they'll have little reason to forfeit.The second this rule risks the participation of teams from England, Spain and Italy UEFA's binning it. There's no profit to be made in running a competition full of clubs from France, Hungary and Bulgaria.
Praying Sevilla don’t finish 3rd in their CL group.
Thankfully it's all going swimmingly so far....
This is awsome thanks for the updates.After much fannying around, this game plus a couple of others were awarded to the home team. In other words, if you inadvertently travel to an away game with players or staff who are Covid-positive, the authorities may stop the entire squad from playing. You can send out a second squad (and UEFA are being flexible on squad registration rules for this), but if they also have a Covid-positive case, you're out of luck and the game will be awarded to the home side. Hopefully we're less likely to be effected by this given the Premier League's testing regime appears to be solid - the high-profile victims are Slvoan Bratislava who were deemed to have forfeited a CL qualifier against a Farose side they'd have expected to beat comfortably.
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No shocks involving the UK and Irish clubs in the Champions League First Qualifying Round, although Linfield ran Legia Warsaw close being 0-0 at 75 minutes before going down to 10 men. In fact, few shocks at all really which can only be a good sign for us - the biggest being Astana's 6-3 reverse at Dynamo Brest. The losers now fall into the Europa League qualifiers, but will go into a seperate Champions Path, so we can't draw any of them until the Group Stage.
Tonight and tomorrow sees the Second Qualifying Round ties:
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We start to see some more interesting games, especially in the League Path. Some of the losers from those League Path ties can face us in Europa qualifiers since they didn't win their domestic leagues - they'll enter the 3rd qualifying round. Because of their coefficients the only potential loser who'd be unseeded at that stage is Lokomotiva, although AZ and PAOK may be unseeded come the 4th and final Europa qualifying round and would be interesting opponents. Celtic have maybe a tougher tie than it appears in Ferencvárosi - they drew 0-0 home and away against Espanyol, away to Ludogorets and at home to CSKA Moscow last season, and even beat CSKA 1-0 away.
Back in the Europa League itself, the Preliminary Round finished as follows:
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Good to see the Northern Irish clubs progress through one round at least (they won't much fancy their odds of going much further...), but Barry Town and St Joseph's should be doing better than that.
The First Qualifying Round takes place mainly on Thursday. Teams winning their ties here will join us in the Second Qualifying Round, drawn on the 31st of August, although the bigger ones (e.g. APOEL, Malmo, Partizan, Steaua Bucharest, Maribor, Rosenborg, Lech Poznan, Aberdeen and The New Saints) will be seeded and therefore unavailable as opponents.
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Plenty of UK and Irish interest here, and some relatively kind draws - Derry City, Bala Town, Lincoln Red Imps and Shamrock Rovers will all fancy their chances, while the two Scottish teams are expected to progress with ease. From our point of view, let's hope as many of the nightmare away trips as possible are eliminated - on this occasion we could really do without the likes of Israel, Cyprus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in particular on a Thursday night in a packed schedule!
Derry City actually play tonight, and at half time are drawing 1-1 at FK Riteriai.