Defending champion CSKA Moscow will play one of France's five clubs, Olympique Marseille, in the group stage of the UEFA Cup with 40 teams bidding to play in next year's final on May 10 in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
CSKA Moscow, which upset Sporting Lisbon 3-1 in the Portuguese club's own Jose Alvalade Stadium in last season's final, is content with its group, which was drawn on Tuesday.
Marseille, which was runner-up two seasons ago, is joined in Group F by Dutch club Heerenveen, Bulgaria's Levski Sofia and Romania's Dinamo Bucharest, which beat Everton 5-1 in a first-leg match last round.
"Russia doesn't win cups every year, so there's a good feeling in the team," said CSKA boss Alexander Stelmakh. "For us the draw is fairly good. I think we can play well against all these teams."
Marseille president Pape Diouf said his team would have been more worried about facing a bigger club from Spain or Italy.
"We can't complain or rejoice," Diouf said. "Even if we have a lot of respect for the title holder, it's not the same as a Latin club."
The 40 clubs were split up into eight groups of five with three teams from each to advance to the next round. The competition then reverts to a knockout stage and the 24 winners will be joined by the eight third-place finishers from the Champions League group phase.
The draw kept teams from the same federations apart, which means that France could have at least five teams in the next round. Three of them have to face German opponents.
AS Monaco, which was Champions League runner-up two seasons ago, is grouped with Hamburg, Slavia Prague, CSKA Sofia and Norway's Viking FK in Group A.
"It's an interesting but at the same time very difficult draw. There are some big European names," said Monaco's director of administration, Alain Cloux.
"It's a north and east draw, so traveling could be kind of tricky."
Lens will face Hertha Berlin, Sampdoria, Steaua Bucharest and Sweden's Halmstads BK in Group C.
Rennes is grouped with VfB Stuttgart, Greek club PAOK, Shakhtar Donetsk of Ukraine and Rapid Bucharest in Group G.
Strasbourg meets AS Roma, Basel, Red Star Belgrade and Norway's Tromso in Group E.
Meanwhile, two other Russian clubs are hoping to replicate CSKA's triumph last season.
Lokomotiv Moscow will play Espanyol, Palermo, Brondby and Israel's Maccabi Petach-Tikva in Group E.
Zenit St. Petersburg will face Turkey's Besiktas, Sevilla, Bolton Wanderers and Vitoria Guimaraes of Portugal in Group H.
Bolton is playing in European competition for the first time and chairman Phil Gartside said it is a reward for its recent rise.
"There are some tasty ties and some exciting away games," Gartside said. "If we finish in the top half of the [Premier League] table and win a domestic trophy, that'll be the culmination of six or seven years hard work."
Surprise Dutch league leader AZ Alkmaar meets England's Middlesbrough, Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk of Ukraine, Grasshoppers Zurich and Bulgaria's Litex Lovech in Group D.
The group matches start Oct. 20 and will be completed Dec. 14-15.
UEFA on Tuesday rejected a protest from Auxerre that a technical error last week cost it a place in the group stage of European soccer's second-tier club competition.
Bulgaria's Levski Sofia beat the French team 1-0 in the second leg and ultimately advanced to the UEFA Cup. But Auxerre said Sofia took a throw-in two minutes before scoring despite it kicking the ball out.
UEFA said it "acknowledged that the throw-in should have been in favor of Auxerre, but concluded there was no direct influence on the final outcome."
Auxerre have until midnight Thursday to lodge an appeal.
league bans butt
Midfielder Nicky Butt was banned for one match Tuesday and fined ?8,500 (12,500 euros) for abusing a match official last month.
On loan from Newcastle to Birmingham City, Butt was sent off in a 1-1 draw against Portsmouth at Fratton Park on Sept. 17 for violent conduct. He then insulted a linesman as he left the field.
Butt admitted a charge of using "abusive and/or insulting words" and will miss the Oct. 16 visit of local rival Aston Villa.
The former England international has already served a three-match ban for the red card.
ANIMAL CELEBRATIONS
Real Madrid defender Ivan Helguera said his Brazilian teammates' habit of celebrating goals by imitating animals could annoy their fellow players as well as opposing sides.
Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos and Julio Baptista have scored six of Madrid's seven goals in recent Spanish league victories over Alaves and Mallorca and, together with Robinho, have celebrated with representations of a cockroach, a frog and a horse.
"They're not doing it out of spite, they're doing it to celebrate, but if I played in the other team and they scored four goals against me I'd think they were making fun of me," Helguera was quoted as saying by news agency Efe.
The Spain defender said he had given Roberto Carlos a kick after one of the animal impressions during the Mallorca game last Sunday.
"I think goals should be celebrated in a group and by the team. I prefer a group celebration because it's not just Roberto or Ronaldo who win but the whole team," Helguera said.
The Brazilians' fad has received a mixed reaction. Many find it amusing and regard it as harmless, while Spanish media this week suggested that the celebrations are potentially divisive, creating a clique of Brazilian players and isolating the rest of the team.
Alaves president Dmitry Piterman called Ronaldo, Robinho and Roberto Carlos "clowns" and "spoilt kids" for wiggling their arms and legs while lying on their backs like cockroaches during Madrid's 3-0 win on Sept. 25.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but