Barcelona are to have to come through a section containing Borussia Dortmund and Inter, after the three former winners all came out together in Thursday’s UEFA Champions League group stage draw in Monaco, while holders Liverpool are to face SSC Napoli again.
Barcelona, Dortmund and Inter were drawn in Group F along with Czech champions Slavia Prague.
Lionel Messi and Barcelona remain favorites to advance as they seek a first Champions League crown since 2015.
After losing in last season’s final, Tottenham Hotspur can look forward to a meeting with Bayern Munich in Group B.
The teams are also to meet Greek champions Olympiakos and Red Star Belgrade of Serbia in Group B.
After winning the Europa League, Chelsea are back in the Champions League and can look forward to taking on last season’s semi-finalists Ajax, as well as former runners-up Valencia and Lille in Group H.
English Premier League champions Manchester City were handed the kindest draw of all four English representatives, with Pep Guardiola’s men coming up against Italian debutants Atalanta BC, Shakhtar Donetsk and Dinamo Zagreb in Group C.
There will be glamor ties between familiar opponents elsewhere, with Real Madrid renewing acquaintances with Paris Saint-Germain in Group A, which also includes Turkish champions Galatasaray and Club Brugge of Belgium.
Juventus are to come up against Atletico Madrid again after beating them in the last 16 last season.
They will also face Bayer Leverkusen and Lokomotiv Moscow in Group D.
Perhaps the most balanced section sees Zenit St Petersburg, Benfica, Lyon and RB Leipzig clash in Group G.
WAXING POETIC
In the award ceremony, Eric Cantona again prompted bafflement with a philosophical monologue loosely based on soccer.
The player-turned-actor elicited furrowed brows from the audience at the draw with a brief, but wide-ranging speech that alluded to science, immortality and war.
Channeling 1995, when he delivered his famous “when the seagulls follow the trawler” speech, the Frenchman kicked off with a quote from King Lear as he accepted the UEFA President’s Award.
Members of the star-studded audience appeared dumbfounded as the former Manchester United forward went on to assert that advancement of science was close to making humans immortal.
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport,” Cantona said, quoting King Lear. “Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the aging of the cells, soon the science will fix the cells to the state and so we will become eternal.”
“Only accidents, crimes, wars, will still kill us, but unfortunately, crimes, wars, will multiply. I love football. Thank you,” he said.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said that the decision to give the award to the “iconic” Cantona, who apparently eschewed the dress code by wearing a crumpled flannel shirt and cap, was easy.
“This is a logical choice, because this award not only recognizes his career as a player of the highest caliber, but also honors him for the person he is: a man who refuses compromise, a man who stands up for his values, who speaks his mind and in particular, who puts his heart and soul into supporting the causes he believes in,” he said.
Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk was later named Player of the Year, while England defender Lucy Bronze took the women’s award.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
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For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
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