The Sync: Tough Draws in the UEFA Cup

Yes­ter­day, the Bundesliga’s five UEFA Cup entrants were handed very tough groups for the upcom­ing mid­dle stage of the UEFA Cup. While group pre­views will be pre­pared later this month, let’s take a look at the draws for Hertha, Schalke, Stuttgart, Wolfs­burg and Hamburg.

1. Group A
Schalke was a top seed, despite being throt­tled by Atletico Madrid in UCL qual­i­fy­ing and draw­ing with Cypriot min­nows APOEL. How­ever, their group is very dif­fi­cult with the world’s rich­est club in Man­ches­ter City and Paris St. Ger­main vis­it­ing Veltins. On the road they face La Liga’s Rac­ing San­dan­ter and, of course, Fred Rutten’s old club FC Twente. Twente would be con­sid­ered the eas­i­est tie were it not for the link to Rut­ten and Engelaar.

2. Group B
Hertha limped through an easy qual­i­fy­ing oppo­nent in the Repub­lic of Ireland’s St Patrick’s Ath­letic and face a bevy of south­ern super­clubs: Ben­fica of Por­tu­gal, Olympiakos of Greece and Galatasaray of Turkey. They have away ties with Met­al­ist Kharkiv of the Ukraine (who beat Besik­tas to get to the group stage) and Werder’s neme­sis from last year Olympiakos. At home, the wel­come Ben­fica and Galatasaray; how­ever, the Turk­ish cham­pi­ons will effec­tively rep­re­sent a neu­tral match, at best, in the capital.

3. Group C
Stuttgart might have been handed the tough­est draw of any of the Bun­desliga sides after scrap­ing by Bul­gar­ian out­fit Cherno More. They face Par­ti­zan Bel­grade at home and fin­ish with Bel­gian side Stan­dard Liege. Liege, the scourge of Mersey­side, were sec­onds from knock­ing Liv­er­pool out of the Cham­pi­ons League, and beat Ever­ton to get to the group stages. They visit two time Cham­pi­ons Seville and a strong Sam­p­do­ria side as well.

4. Group E
Wolfs­burg dis­missed Rapid Bucharest to make the group stages. Their reward is a trip to the San Siro to face some no-names by the name of A.C. Milan. Oth­er­wise they have the clean­est draw for the Ger­man sides, although by no means is it easy. They also visit the lovely AXA Sta­dium to play FC Braga of Por­tu­gal. At home, they host Portsmouth of Eng­land and Heren­veen of Holland.

5. Group F
Ham­burg lead the league and eas­ily dis­missed Roman­ian out­fit Unirea Urz­iceni. As another top seed, they missed out on a chance to face Mar­tin Jol’s old club Tot­ten­ham, but hope­fully both teams can progress to set up such a tasty affair. How­ever they are in the group of cham­pi­ons as they face two other past Euor­pean hold­ers in Aston Villa and Ajax. Both ties against these teams will be at HSH Nord­bank. Their away games will be against east­ern sides Slavia Prague and MSK Zilina of Slovakia.

Diana has a good post in her Lit­tle Miss India blog about the draw as well. So check it out!

Tagged as: Martin Jol, Tottenham, UEFA Cup