Holders Manchester United were handed arguably the plum pick during the Champions League quarter-finals draw after being pitted against 2004 champions FC Porto yesterday.
For the second year in a row four English teams feature in the last eight, with Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool also looking for a quick and comparatively easy passage to the semi-finals.
While 2006 finalists Arsenal were drawn to play Spanish side Villarreal, semi-finalists the same year, an all-English quarter-final will see Liverpool take on Chelsea at Anfield before traveling to Stamford Bridge a week later.
In the other quarter-final, 2006 winners Barcelona welcome Bayern Munich to the Nou Camp before playing the second leg in Germany.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s United went into the draw as the favorites to defend their title, although the bookies will be looking closely at the current form of Porto — and past statistics between the teams — before setting the odds.
Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho was coach of Porto in 2004 when the Portuguese giants sent United crashing out at the first knockout round before going on to win the title. Of the six matches the clubs have played in Europe they have each won two, lost two and drawn two.
Liverpool and Chelsea meanwhile must be wondering whether they are destined to never be apart in the competition.
Although they meet at an earlier stage this year, the Premier League rivals have met in the semi-finals in three of the past four campaigns, with Liverpool claiming the bragging rights.
Chelsea won passage to last year’s final, where they were defeated by United, after a 4-3 aggregate defeat of Liverpool.
In 2007, Liverpool prevailed 4-1 from a penalty shoot-out after the two-leg tie, in which Chelsea hosted Liverpool in the first leg, finished in a 1-1 draw.
Two years earlier, Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat of Chelsea at Anfield, after a scoreless draw in London, was enough to book passage to the 2005 final where they beat AC Milan after a penalty shoot-out.
Arsene Wenger will be happy at being able to focus his young team’s energy on a non-English Premier League team, and the prospect of claiming an away goal in the first leg at Villarreal will have boosted his side’s hopes of a making the semis.
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