Champions League group draw today at 12noon EST
By: Isaiah | August 28th, 2008
It’s the Champions League group stage draw and here I am, sitting at work, bringing it to you as live as I can. Barcelona is in Pot 1 (of 4).
Here are the pots:
Pot 1: Chelsea (England), Liverpool (England), FC Barcelona (Spain), Arsenal (England), Manchester United (England), Olympique Lyón (France), Real Madrid (Spain), and Inter Milán (Italy).
Pot 2: Bayern Múnich (Germany), PSV Eindhoven (Holland), Villarreal (Spain), Roma (Italy), Porto (Portugal), Werder Bremen (Germany), Sporting Lisbon (Portugal), and Juventus (Italy).
Pot 3: Olympique Marseilles (France), Zenit (Russia), Steaua Bucharest (Rumania), Panathinaikos (Greece), Girondins de Bordeaux (Francia), Glasgow Celtic (Scotland), Basle (Switzerland), and Fenerbahçe (Turkey).
Pot 4: Atlético Madrid (Spain), Anorthosis (Cyprus), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine), Fiorentina (Italy), Dynamo Kiev (Ukraine), CFR 1907 Cluj (Rumania), Aalborg (Denmark), and BATE Borisov (Belarus).
Remember, Barça can’t face anyone from Spain in the first round. Here are my rushed thoughts on who I’d like to face: PSV/Porto; Basel/Steaua/Bordeaux; CFR/AaB/Anorthosis/BATE.
Here is who I would like to avoid: Juventus/Bayern; Celtic; Fiorentina/Dynamo Kiev
Note that out of pot 3, only Celtic makes the grade but only because I don’t want to see some more boring “pack the box” nonsense like last year. As for the others, I have to say that I’m not afraid of anyone in the tournament and would have liked to play an English team twice in the group stage, but it’s not to be as the EPL is currently overrated by UEFA. Nonsense, I say, but most of the visitors here know where I stand on that front: it’s rubbish, as they say. Masters of the 2-legged affair (thanks to modern catenaccio), they certainly are, but getting Liverpool or Chelsea in the group stage would have been fantastic.
Anyway, I’ll update this with our group and what I think of the teams…
Barcelona falls into Group C. C for Catalan, no doubt. And Champions.
Pot 2 produces Sporting CP. Could have been much worse. Madrid gets Juve; Villarreal gets Man U. Sporting is a good team and we’ll finally get to see João Moutinho in the Camp Nou…Second in the Portuguese league last year isn’t so great, but they’re dangerous, no doubt about that.
Pot 3 produces Basel! Exactly who I wanted, even though they’re the winners of the Swiss league. Madrid get Zenit, so they’ll see Arshavin; I thought for sure we’d get them. Celtic in with Man U and Villarreal. Ouch.
Pot 4 produces Shaktar Donetsk. Last year’s Ukranian champions. We so very nearly had by far the easiest group, but Shaktar complicates things quite a bit. Not bad, though.
The group is
Barcelona
Sportin CP
Basel
Shaktar
I think the group of death is Group G: Arsenal, Porto, Fenerbahçe, Dynamo Kiev, but Group D (Liverpool, PSV, Marseille, Atletico Madrid) is no joke either. It came down to BATE and Shaktar being in either our group or in Real Madrid’s and BATE got dropped into EE, Juve, and Zenit. Ouch.
Let’s hear what you have to say about these teams.
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Comments
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I hope Arshavin rapes EE… in the Classico. I remain hopeful even if we have just three days left
Posted from
Ireland
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happy birthday bojan.
Posted from
United States -
Damn…looks very manangeable…I figured because of 3rd place finish, we’d be in pot 2 and catch a Chelsea or something (which for excitement would not have been all that bad.)
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United States -
Well we have a pretty easy run to the finals. Sporting should be a bit of a challenge, but nothing our boys can’t handle. And yes, Arshavin WILL rape EE in the classico.
Posted from
Australia -
We’re through the group stages. No worries. Those douches over at Goal.com have picked the EE to win the Liga this year. Won’t they be sorry when we win it, the bastids. How dare they doubt the majesty of the Blaugrana?
Posted from
United States -
Looks like I’ll be at the first CL match: Barca v Sporting at the Camp Nou, Sept 16th. I’ll fly to Barca Monday night, go to the match Tuesday and fly home Wednesday night. Awesome.
For those interested, I have an SLR camera and will email pics for this blog if I get any good ones.
I wonder if I froze myself like Cartman waiting for the Wii would it come any quicker… I’m so excitedPosted from
Ireland -
Ciaran, I’ll help you. I watched that show and know precisely what to do. I just ask for you to take me with you.
Posted from
United States -
Ciaran, I am green with envy.
Posted from
Australia -
Ciaran, if I CAN go, I’d like to meet you (but september marks the beginning of one of the most busy times for us, those psychologists on the northern hemisphere… You know, the post-vacation blues, the shortening of the days…
)========================
And now, ahem, to Kev (and others)…
According to french sports gazette “So Foot” (quoted by Sport), Titi Henry is the *fourth* best payed football player in the known world. They don’t count CR’s and Ibrahimovic’s new contracts yet, so the order goes like this:
1- Kaká
2- Ballach
3- Terry
4- Our TH
5- GerrardNo matter what this list says, one thing is true: TH is one of the best payed players in the world and, most probably, the best payed in Barça. So any discussion about his performance *must* take this into account. And it’s not only me that says so: I assure you that this has been, historically, the stance of Barça socis towards their players since, Barça being a pure association, the socis themselves are paying them… Of course, you can qualify that as much as you wish, but the fact remains that *we* Barça socis are convinced of it.
That’s one of Barça’s many idiosyncrasies. Keep it in mind when you see some reactions against Henry that look incomprehensible at first sight
From the Natural Park of El Montseny (BCN), still taking the sleep off my eyes.
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United States -
That, Genis, just means that he was a good negotiator.
But sort of seriously, I think that we were paying for potential. It’s sort of too bad that the relationship got off to a bad start with the bummer family stuff, injury and exile to left wing. Hopefully this season goes better.
Besides, that’s what happens when you buy an icon.
And in terms of getting money’s worth, I would argue that Gudjohnsen, though he doesn’t make as much, is significantly more overpaid (as I’m sure many socis see Henry’s salary) than Henry.
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United States -
He, he
Well, AFAIK Guddy earns 1/4 of what Henry does. So, when I have time I’ll look for stats in order to see if Guddy has done more or less than 1/4 of what Titi has done so far, and to what extent each of them has fulfilled or not what we could reasonably expect considering their previous stats on EPL…
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United States -
Well, TH’s contract certainly more than pays for itself in marketing/sales (shirts, tickets, etc) alone, so we can’t look at a player’s salary and expect a clear correlation with performance. It’s more correlated with popularity and reputation – hence marketing potential – than anything else.
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United States -
Citizen, that’s the point I made for Arshavin’s case, since he would open the potentially big russian market…
But I’m afraid that, in the case of Henry, he doesn’t sell much more shirts than Guddy or, for that matter, Abidal or Silvinho (and, certainly, no more tickets for the Nou Camp, since there are so few free seats).
Well, another thing to look up (sold shirts and other memorabilia per player), I suppose…
From BCN
Posted from
United States -
Are there any official figures for how much money FCB makes off of shirt sales (and even more specifically, individual player shirt sales).
If each shirt costs €65, then in order to recoup the €24million transfer fee, FCB would have to sell 369,231 TH14 shirts. Then there’s the reported €7.5million a year salary. That’s another 115,385 shirts to sell for a grand total of 830,771 shirts over the course of the four-year contract. That’s a boatload of jerseys, my friends and it’s indicative of just how much money we’re talking about.
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United States -
Oh, Citizen, and another thing to look up in favor -or not- of your argument is IF at all, and how much, does Barça recover/get via the advertisement for third parties “starred” by Titi (I suspect it is nothing, since these last years every “famous” player that has signed for us -or for other great clubs- has refused to share with Barça these source of revenues).
Hmmmm…
From you know where.
Posted from
United States -
Isaiah, my data is that TH gets €10 millon a year from Barça…
Posted from
United States -
Another thing, Isaiah: each official shirt may cost €65, but it’s obvious that Barça doesn’t get that much per shirt sold. Sure the net profit per shirt is MUCH less, perhaps in the order of 15-20% of the price (I’m just guessing here).
From there.
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United States -
By the way, I forgot that ManU and Zenit are playing the “SuperCup” right now. I see that Arshavin is not playing but Danni does. And just now -min 43 first half- Pogrebnyac scores for Zenit… I’ve only been watching for about 10 min, but Zenit has had two more good opportunities.
I hear now that Arshavin is going to start the 2nd half.
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United States -
That’s a good point about profit, Genis. I knew there was something I was forgetting…or at least I knew I was going to forget some detail…
So you can effectively triple that number I quoted to give you the number of shirt sales required to make TH14 “worth it”…of course there are so many other factors too…
Posted from
United States -
no Genis…they get these shirts made in China and they should not cost more than 10-15$ each when mass produced..the 815k would be more like a million or so…but still a lot..
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United States -
There is another thing, money from tours. Henry seemed to be the big draw for us in the US. Thats probably worth a few quid too.
Palacio said that he will certainly leave if an offer comes in.
And Arshavin definitely wants to join us too.
We have cleared Ezquerro, Giovani and Ronnie with only Hleb coming in.
By anyones calculations that makes us weaker than before. I don;t think we will sign anyone but I’d hate if we were regretting not signing someone now and trying in JanuaryPosted from
Ireland -
Mat, add to that all the expenses related to the Barça physical stores (staff, energy, whatever) and also the fact that there are a lot of Barça store franchises that sell the shirt at the same price but must have their own margin too…
Do we have any expert in marketing reading this, so he can clarify the point (since we have little more to talk about for a couple of days, or so it seems).
And Zenit won ManU quite deservedly 0-2. (Best players: Danni, Progebnyak and one russian central defender [???] + Tévez)
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United States -
Ciaran, we’ve also added Pedro to that account and he’s easily worth what Ezquerro was. So minus Gio and Ronnie, plus Hleb. And neither Gio or Ronnie played much during year, really.
Posted from
United States -
It was just for my own amusement that I included Ezquerro.
I personally would rather have Giovani in the squad than no one. Hleb replaces Ronnie adequately. He’s not as good as Ronnie at his best but we haven’t had Ronnie at his best for a while.
If Messi gets injured, which is always a possibility unfortunately, we are lacking something.
Ronaldinho, Eto’o, Giuly, Messi and Larsson was a better line up than Henry, Eto’o, Messi, Bojan and Hleb. That’s my point. I like our frontline now but I miss Larsson and Giuly.
Larsson was just an incredibly intelligent striker that didn’t waste chances. Is a pity that Bojan wasn’t able to train with him, he’d learn so much.
Giuly did one thing that we haven’t done since he left… run in behind defenders. It was predictable but he was so good at it. By the time he received the ball he was one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Messi has the ability to beat 5 defenders but every now and then he could make the run and receive the ball with no one near him.
If we had someone just willing to make the off-the-ball run we would keep the opposition on their toes. Palacio and Arshavin would probably be willing to make that run.
Xavi, Iniesta and Messi do their damage with the ball.Posted from
Ireland -
sorry I track back…I read somewhere that most of the shirt sales go to Nike rather than Barca…which makes all our predcitions very vague unless we know how much Barca actually gets nett on every shirt sale!
Posted from
United States
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