AC Milan and Arsenal enter the Champions League in
the draw for a playoff round that could be decided in courtrooms as well
as stadiums.
Milan and Arsenal are seeded in
the 10-team non-champions section where potential opponents include
Fenerbahce and Metalist Kharkiv - both threatened with expulsion by UEFA
because club officials are implicated in match-fixing cases.
Metalist
faces a UEFA disciplinary panel next Tuesday, one week before first-leg
matches begin, but could appeal any ruling at the Court of Arbitration
for Sport and continue to play.
Fenerbahce is
already heading to CAS. The Turkish club awaits a hearing date to appeal
against a two-year ban from UEFA competitions. A verdict is expected
before the Aug. 29 group-stage draw in Monaco.
The
other seeded non-champions are group-stage regulars Lyon, Schalke and
Zenit St. Petersburg. Seedings are decided by clubs' results in UEFA
competitions over the previous five seasons.
Portuguese
newcomer Pacos de Ferreira joins the unseeded pool alongside
Fenerbahce, debutant Metalist, 1988 European Cup winner PSV Eindhoven
and Real Sociedad.
Ten national title-holders are in a separate section
of the draw, includes former European champions Celtic (1967) and
Steaua Bucharest (1986). They are seeded alongside Basel, Dinamo Zagreb
and Viktoria Plzen.
Unseeded teams looking to
break into the group-stage elite are Austria Vienna, Legia Warsaw,
Ludogorets Razgrad, Maribor and Shakhter Karagandy.
Ludogorets
and Shakhter, which have both advanced further than ever before in
European competitions, are the true underdogs with UEFA club rankings of
No. 295 and 324, respectively.
Bulgarian champion Ludogorets has already beaten Slovan Bratislava of Slovakia and Serbia's Partizan.
Kazakh
champion Shakhter scored an upset victory over BATE Borisov – which
last season beat eventual winner Bayern Munich in a group match – and
followed up by eliminating Skenderbeu of Albania this week.
Each
playoff round team collects 2.1 million euros ($2.8 million) prize
money, and the 10 winners join 22 elite teams which qualified directly
for the lucrative group stage. The 32 group teams will share around 900
million euros ($1.2 billion) on offer for the rest of the competition.
Complications
could pile up for UEFA if Fenerbahce and Metalist win their playoff
matches on merit but are then removed for legal reasons. Their defeated
third qualifying round opponents this week - Salzburg and PAOK
Thessaloniki - could also seek to be reinstated.
UEFA's
Champions League rules require clubs not to have been involved in
fixing matches since April 2007. Fenerbahce's case dates back to 2011
and Metalist's in 2008. Both clubs deny wrongdoing.
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