Thus the quaint end of the business, the Uefa Cup, whose first-round pairings include Newcastle against an Arab-owned Israeli side, and Ferencvaros against south London’s improbable FA Cup runners-up. Those ties became known after the serious, moneyed Champions League had made its starting arrangements for the new campaign while its organisers arranged the candles on their birthday cake in Monte Carlo.
In the 50th European Cup, there are half a dozen reasons for national optimism — well, six clubs capable of winning it have Englishmen in them — and an expectation that the adventure should be long for all of the Premiership’s finest. Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool were largely kept away from the toughest groups for the first stage.
There are French obstacles in the way of United, Liverpool and Chelsea next month, but none to terrify, and beyond that only Rafa Benitez’s return to Spain, to Deportivo La Coruña, would be a fixture to mark down as a likely home win. The pools with the piranhas at the bottom are the one Celtic have been drawn in, Group F, with Milan and Barcelona, and Group C, which includes three of the last eight champions, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Ajax. Nor are the duels facing Claudio Ranieri’s Valencia too comfortable either. The Spanish champions must meet their German and Belgian counterparts, Werder Bremen and Anderlecht, as well as Italy’s Internazionale.
So the birthday season should begin with the Premiership quartet surviving the first games of musical chairs, and concentrating instead on several ironies. Not least that history’s first-ever English invitee, Chelsea, have in five decades turned from the competition’s refuseniks into its control freaks. The same Chelsea who, as English champions in 1955, did not take part under advice from the League now enter the European Cup under the guidance of the manager who can call himself the title-holder — José Mourinho took Porto to the summit last May — and an owner whose dominance of football’s economy now extends beyond the transfer market. Roman Abramovich’s financial relationship with another club, CSKA Moscow, has set off a Uefa investigation now that Chelsea play CSKA, who are sponsored by Sibneft, the Russian’s oil company, in the first group stage. The match will go ahead; the organisers expect to find no conflict of interest strong enough to stand in its way.
As for going all the way, a variety of managers, presidents and chief-executives declared in Monaco at the draw ceremonies that this would be “the hardest Champions League ever”, and they get that impression from the fact that the strongest clubs from the biggest leagues are better represented than they were 12 months ago. The elite also sense these are insecure times. Clubs from Portugal and France reached the European Cup final for the first time in a decade. More freakish still, Greece then won Europe’s premier international prize.
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“You look at the teams that did well in European competition last year and the team that won Euro 2004,” said Liverpool’s chief executive Rick Parry, “and it showed it’s not necessarily about the most expensive squads or the best players. What it is about is the best organised and best coached teams.”
He was not alone in acting on that instinct. An unusual number of the wealthier clubs changed their managers during the summer.
To look around those who expect to make the last eight is to see most of the usual contenders in transition. Juventus, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter, Chelsea and Valencia have all appointed new head coaches; Porto and Roma have even changed manager not once since the end of last term, but twice. Barcelona, ditching Dutchmen and acquiring Brazilians like a man swapping his old VHS tapes for a new set of DVDs, changed half their team. None of the new coaches will need road-maps for the Champions League — Juventus have hired Fabio Capello, Madrid José Antonio Camacho, Bayern Felix Magath and Inter Roberto Mancini. But it makes those clubs who have maintained a sense of stability quietly assured. Step forward Milan and Arsenal: Same manager, same players, same systems. Both won their domestic leagues in comfort and it is only rational to put Milan and Arsenal at the head of the list of likely winners. Arsenal have a slender edge on youth, and a simpler first-round group than the Serie A title-holders. Milan’s advantage would be know-how. Paolo Maldini, still going strong, has won four European Cups. Arsenal have a habit of going weak at the knees at the sight of a Champions League knockout tie.
Arsenal’s domestic form has still set alarm bells ringing across the Continent, while the rest of the English challenge carries other superlatives: The Premiership provides the competition’s richest — Chelsea — and the country’s most decorated Europeans, Liverpool, two clubs whose new managers arrive with the freshest expertise, Mourinho from Porto’s European Cup triumph and Benitez with Valencia’s Uefa Cup. Manchester United, the only club to have broken the glass ceiling between English football and the main prize in the past 20 years, claim their annual entitlement to a place near the favourites.
Then there’s the swelling number of English exiles, three of them at the club who have enjoyed the greatest success in Europe over the past decade. That’s Real Madrid, where David Beckham, Michael Owen and Jonathan Woodgate are all experienced enough to need no reminder that a 10th European Cup is expected.
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All told, the English will enter the Continent’s principal competition in record numbers. Sven-Göran Eriksson, the England manager, has no fewer than seven Champions League fixtures each midweek to choose from before anybody can accuse him of moonlighting. Besides the four Premiership sides, and Británico Madrid, there are England internationals at Celtic — Chris Sutton and Alan Thompson — and Bayern Munich, where Owen Hargreaves has not yet been prised away despite several attempts during the summer.
Eriksson values the Champions League as an examination of calibre above anything his players do at weekends, and it is something for the Premiership to boast that players such as Woodgate and Michael Owen have found such an illustrious home.
Emilio Butragueno, Madrid’s sporting director, acknowledges this is new territory for his club. Madrid have always been enthusiastic about bringing in overseas players, but were more likely to be drawn to South America. “Times have changed,” says Butragueno, “and we have brought in two more English players this summer who are young and we believe will adapt. Because they are young they should be important to Real Madrid for the next four or five years.”
Bulk buying seemed to be in fashion, Butragueno agreed. Barcelona have made five Brazil-born new signings; Milan’s four Brazilians are a large part of their strength, and if Madrid have gone English, Valencia appear to have an exclusive trade agreement with Italy. Ranieri has brought in four compatriots in the close season. Above all, Butragueno, an admired Madrid centre-forward of the 1980s and early 90s, is happy his club have addressed the defects that made last season’s team the weakest Real side for five years.
“After what happened last season we had to balance the team,” he said in Monaco. “That’s why we signed two central defenders (Woodgate and Walter Samuel) and Michael Owen. Last year we thought we had a very good team but unfortunately we were wrong.”