Inter Milan, Barcelona, AS Roma and Rangers are on the brink of qualifying in today's Champions League group matches, with Arsenal and Manchester United already through to the knockout stages.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger intends to give some of his young Gunners another chance to impress in the Group H trip to Sevilla.
A place in the last 16 of Europe's elite club competition is already in the bag after securing the point they needed with a goalless draw from the away game against Slavia Prague earlier this month.
Manchester United, meanwhile, top Group F with a perfect record of 12 points from four matches as they prepare to meet Sporting Lisbon at Old Trafford.
For Scottish club Rangers, however, there is everything to play for at VfB Stuttgart.
Midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger has warned Rangers that he and Stuttgart have regained the belief which brought them the Bundesliga title last season.
The former Aston Villa midfielder is a key figure in the Stuttgart team and was as dismayed as anyone when their season began in lackluster fashion. But Stuttgart made it four wins in a row with their weekend 4-1 victory away to Eintracht Frankfurt.
Hitzlsperger said, after Stuttgart turned on the style: "We are back to our old strength because we believe in ourselves again. After the terrible start we were determined to come back. The results have given us new self-confidence."
Stuttgart may have to cope without German player of the year Mario Gomez when they face Rangers at the Gottlieb-Daimler stadium. The striker had to come off before half-time with a back problem against Frankfurt.
He has not been ruled out yet but Stuttgart will not want to include the 22-year-old if there is any risk involved. They cannot qualify for the last 16 after losing all four of their Group E matches so far.
A Rangers victory combined with Lyon losing at home to Barcelona would give the Scots passage with a game left to go.
Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o is training again after a three-month lay-off after rupturing a tendon in a friendly match with Inter Milan in late August.
He was a goalscorer in Barca's 2-1 win over Arsenal in last year's European Champions League final though in Eto'o's absence, Argentine striker Lionel Messi has taken over the role of being Barca's principal goal getter.
Lyon, however, are set to field Brazilian Fred in the center forward role in the possible absence of Karim Benzema who has a right thigh injury. Benzemi clashed with Rennes player Bruno Cheyrou on Saturday and club doctors have put a large question mark over his appearance against Barcelona.
Meanwhile AS Roma captain Francesco Totti is a major doubt after suffering a recurrence of the foot problem that has sidelined him for the last month.
Totti lasted just 15 minutes of his return to first-team training on Nov. 22 before taking a knock on the same foot he had injured in the 2-1 win over Sporting Lisbon on Oct. 23.
Although X-rays after the initial injury showed no fractures in his right foot, the player was in too much pain to train the following game and missed Saturday's Italian league match at Genoa.
Roma coach Luciano Spalletti said he did not know when Totti would be fit again though it appears unlikely that Totti, 31, will be available for the Group F match in Kiev where Roma can secure their place in the knockout rounds.
Group G leaders Inter Milan are expected to make changes for today's trip to Turks Fenerbahce after a 2-1 home victory over Atalanta in the Italian league on Saturday kept them top of the table.
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
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
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier