UEFA Cup: Good Draw For Fiorentina
By: Martha | October 9th, 2007
The UEFA Cup draw was held this morning, and Fiorentina — the only Italian team left in the tournament — find themselves in Group C, paired with the teams that are statistically the best and (almost) the worst still competing for the trophy.
No matter how highly you think of Bayern Munich and their effortless scoring, according to UEFA’s mysterious “coefficient” system, the best team in the draw, statistically, are Villarreal. One guess who’s in the Viola’s group — yep, it’s Giuseppe Rossi and his friends. At the other end of the quality spectrum, meanwhile, are Swedish side IF Elfsborg, whose UEFA coefficient is a lofty 4.478 (Villarreal’s is 78.374; Fiorentina’s is 21.808), lower than all but one of the other teams in the tournament. They, too, are in Group C, so hopefully their presence will provide a soothing salve to any beatings the Spaniards (plus that one Italian-American kid) might be handing out to their group-mates. Rounding out the group are AEK Athens, who were part of the astonishing Greek success during the first round, and were only one of five Greek sides in the draw, and Palermo’s drab vanquishers, the Czech Republic’s Mladá Boleslav.
Matches begin at the end of the month (that draw has not yet been made); the top three teams from each group go through the knock-out round, where they’ll be joined by the third-place teams from the Champions League group stage.
Category: 
Subscribe
|
Print
|
Share
      |
Comments
-
Fiorentina shouldn’t have too much trouble advancing. Plus, Villareal v. Fiorentina should make for some good entertainment for the non-UEFA Cup haters out there (I know, there aren’t many of us).
Nothing too scary to worry about on the other teams in the group. Old man Rivaldo is on AEK Athens now, so Fiorentina will have to watch out for some free kick magic or if that fails, then some ridiculous play-acting to solicit an undeserved card.
But, the group stage is only 4 games for each team, with 2 home and 2 away matches. Looks like Fiorentina will be playing away to AEK Athens and Villareal. This is far from easy, but hopefully they can draw one of those two matches and win their home ones to ensure that they advance to the knockout phase of the tournament.
Posted from
United States
Comments are closed
Home 
