Arsenal must overcome Serie A opposition in the shape of Udinese if Arsene Wenger’s team are to make it to the Champions League group stages for the 14th successive season.
Meanwhile, the draw for the Europa League playoffs threw up a Battle of Britain clash as Scottish club Hearts were paired with English Premier League giants Tottenham Hotspur.
Arsenal were pitted against the Italian side in the draw for the Champions league playoffs held at UEFA headquarters in Nyon yesterday.
This will be a first ever meeting between Arsenal, the beaten finalists in 2006, and Udinese, who last made it into the group stage that same season.
Yesterday’s draw also featured two previous winners of Europe’s top club competition, with Bayern Munich facing Swiss side FC Zurich and former titleholders from Portugal Benfica up against Dutch league runners-up FC Twente.
Bayern have been crowned champions of Europe four times and their coach Jupp Heynckes said: “This is a game we can win and an interesting task. We have a great opportunity to move into the group stage.”
However, Heynckes was relieved to avoid being drawn against Russia’s Rubin Kazan, saying: “That would have been a long trip for us.”
The Russian outfit, who caused a stir when beating Barcelona 2-1 in the group stage two seasons ago, will not prove easy pickings for Lyon of France.
Rubin booked their playoff place with a 4-1 aggregate qualifying win over Dynamo Kiev.
Malmo, who knocked out Scottish giants Rangers in the third qualifying round this week, were rewarded with a match-up against Croatian league champions Dynamo Zagreb.
Spain’s Villarreal cross swords with Danish side Odense, who have never reached the Champions League group stage but who booked their playoff ticket with a thrilling 5-4 aggregate win over Panathinaikos of Greece.
Arsenal are forced to go through the playoffs after their end of term collapse which resulted in a fourth place finish in the Premier League last season.
The first leg at their Emirates stadium will be staged with Wenger serving a one-match touchline ban for using “inappropiate language” at referee Massimo Busacca in the wake of Arsenal’s second-round exit to Barcelona at the Nou Camp last season.
Arsenal’s two-legged encounter with Udinese falls between some demanding home assignments against Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester United.
In the Europa League, Hearts sealed their place in this stage of the competition after beating Hungarian club Paksi in new coach Paulo Sergio’s first match in charge on Thursday.
However, the meeting with last season’s Champions League quarter-finalists represents a huge test for the Edinburgh club.
It will be the first-ever competitive meeting of the sides.
Elsewhere, last year’s Europa League finalists Fulham were handed a tricky-looking draw against Ukrainian club Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, who are coached by former Sevilla, Spurs and Real Madrid boss Juande Ramos.
Birmingham City will meet Nacional of Portugal, while Stoke City’s reward for beating Hajduk Split in their first European match for 37 years is a meeting with Swiss club FC Thun.
Scottish champions Rangers will meet another Champions League dropout in Maribor of Slovenia.
Celtic will meet FC Sion of Switzerland, while the surviving Irish representative Shamrock Rovers take on Partizan Belgrade.
Other standout ties include last season’s Turkish league runners-up Trabzonspor against Athletic Bilbao of Spain and Hannover, fourth in last season’s Bundesliga, against two-time UEFA Cup winners Sevilla.
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