Nobody fancies about the draw of 16 yet?

[Hitman]

mihan, but its not a magician that picks the ball, its usually a famous football player selecting a ball for each round.

[Gabriel426]

JM is by far the best coach in the world. As u really can't argue otherwise. He is still the only coach who beated Barca while Barca at full strength the past years. On top of that, he started the how to bear Barca trend, by first hitting them on counter and actually attacking D. Alves at the back, and inserting a CB in front of two CBs to take away rooms for Messi.

Allegri as of now is a good coach and I think he could be great but really lacks the players he want to suucced. Then again, his preferences of Italian players will probably be a bigger downfall than his lack of substitutions. I am talking about Bonera, btw.

[ElMago99]

I'm one that believes (knows) that almost everything on this planet is fixed. At least the important things. However, I don't think the draws of CL are fixed. All the good teams have to play each other eventually and guys like Beckham and Zidane pick the balls. I doubt they'd willingly do that. You never know..obviously, but I just doubt it.

[Gio-mania]

I wasn't trying to insinuate the the draws are rigged nor do I actually think they are. Just that given past draws, one might think they are. I don't, however, dismiss the possibility.

In any case it looks like all the teams in the second tier are all pretty mediocre apart from Milan and Napoli, and I don't really think Napoli could manage to pull off a feat against Barça. At least not over two games and without any overwhelming injury crises for the Catalans or some other odd circumstance. So Barça should be safe however the draw goes. The first tier teams should actually be weary of getting us, since we are at the same level as many of them and we have shown that we can be problematic even for teams who are superior to us.

Just look at our outings against Barça. If we had the defensive solidity of the first game in the second game we could've actually gotten away with a win. Then there are other circumstances too, like Xavi's dive and Robinho's usual open goal miss. All in all it isn't insane to say that on a good day we could actually beat any team. Problem is of course, we have to have our good day.

[Hasan Rossonero]

I hope Napoli get APOEL.

I hope we get Benfica, but I would be okay with Chelsea or Arsenal.

I hope Inter get a French team.

3 teams in the QFs--God willing--would do wonders for Serie A and coeff points.

[Warro Bantan]

Dont care who we get....just dont think we will get very far, unless we improve big-time, or we catch the "big" sides on a bad couple of "days"...

Robinho scores one goal in 5....Pato cant score vs packed defenses, Ibra-cadabra tends to do a disappearing act, and we have allowed an alarmingly high number of goals in all competitions.

Nope. Not putting my money on Milan, just my hopes.

Forza Milan as always.

[Gabriel426]

I know the draw is near but the games are a couple of months away. A lot can happen between now till then.

[ACM2023]

I hope Napoli get APOEL.

I hope we get Benfica, but I would be okay with Chelsea or Arsenal.

I hope Inter get a French team.

3 teams in the QFs--God willing--would do wonders for Serie A and coeff points.

let's hope that your wish will turn true. two more days to find out.

---

I know the draw is near but the games are a couple of months away. A lot can happen between now till then.

if we get Benfica or APOEL or Real Madrid, then it doesn't matter how much things will change.

[Hitman]

yeah, a team that concedes this many goals has never won the CL... I can't remember a CL-winning team with a worse defence than ours at this time....


I wish Napoli would get an easy draw, they have always been so hard done by in recent years with luck and have always managed to come out on top. They deserve a break. With their luck, they would get one of the Spanish sides I just know it, but I do hope they get any other team, I believe they could manage against the English sides better than we would.


some details for those who care about the coefficients:

Inter x Leverkusen and Milan x Bayern would be a nice battle for the coeffecients... we don't only want to make it to the next level but we need to outperform the German teams. That's the key. We dont need to win the CL, we just have to do better, and so far they have done better than us by 1.01.... Germany now has a total of 10.083 and Italy has 9.071.

since there are 7 Italian teams, so every win for Italy counts for 2/7 = 0.2857 and every draw counts as 0.143. For German clubs, every win counts as 0.333 and a draw as 0.167. The win/draw points are the same for CL and EL. The only difference is the bonus points offered for qualifying to the competition and next rounds (Italians got 0.714 (5 divided by 7) points each for qualifying to CL knock-outs. The Italians got 0.57 (4 divided by 7) each for qualifying to the CL). After the knockouts in the CL, you are only offered one extra bonus point for every round you qualify. The EL offers no bonus points for qualifying to the next round (I am not 100% sure).

As it currently stands, Italy need 3 wins and a draw, just to equal Germany's record as of today. Not to mention - Lazio will be eliminated today from the Europa League because they're unlikely to qualify in their situation, and Udinese - will they stop Celtic from beating them at the Stadio Friuli to qualify. The two German teams in the EL have already qualified to the next round, Hannover and Schalke.

The next matchday in Europe Italy will have Milan, Inter, Napoli in the CL and (likely) Udinese in the EL, while Germany will have Bayern and Leverkusen in CL and Schalke + Hannover in the EL. Four vs Four. We need to not only hope we get easy draws, but hope the Germans get difficult draws too.


Some of you don't understand how important this is. Some don't care. This is why I have and will support Inter in Europe as much as the rest of the Italians. We need to return back to the top and we will need at least 2 years of hard work to get the 4th spot back.

[ElMago99]

yeah, a team that concedes this many goals has never won the CL... I can't remember a CL-winning team with a worse defence than ours at this time....

The interesting thing is that our *DEFENSE* is not bad player by player. T.Silva, Nesta, Abate are very strong defenders, and obviously we have an issue just on the left side.

I think our midfield is the reason we concede so much. I'd like to see a video of all of the goals we've conceded in Europe, but I'm certainly not happy about conceding this much, considering Milan has a history of always being the best defensive side.