Champions League qualification is over for another season, as a 1-1 draw “away” to Haifa took us through. It’s a tortuous process in which major clubs take a step onto a very wobbly bridge above a moat of press derision, and catch a golden ball worth £12m fired at them by General Lennart Johannsen. To claim the money the clubs must then carry the ball across the bridge to the Group Stage on the other side, while being bombarded with cannon fire from the Emerald minnows as Lars-Christer Olsson and fellow members of the UEFA match committe in ghoul masks swing big pink space hoppers at them.

In the last three seasons we’ve had some difficulty at this stage, losing home legs to AK Graz and CSKA Sofia in 2004 and 2005 though progressing through strong away performances. And we’re not the only major club who has found this stage problematic. Lyon have been knocked out by Maribor Teatanic, Inter Milan by Helsingborg IF, and Ajax by Celtic. Barca, Lazio, Man Utd and Juve have had to recover from poor first legs against the likes of Skonto Riga, FC København, Zalaegerszegi TE and Djurgårdens IF. AC Milan only scraped past Slovan Liberec on away goals and Villareal had to rely on Pierlugi Collina disallowing a goal to progress past part-time minnows Everton.

Why is it so difficult? It comes down to lack of quality preparation. Many of the larger sides have disjointed pre-season preparations as the majority of their players are seconded to national squads for some of the summer and arrive back at the clubs in dribs and drabs. Couple this with playing a series of friendlies against opposition of variable quality whilst juggling line-ups to try and improve match fitness and mid August is the perfect time for a shock.

So the message of the Haifa tie is ignore the performance, and enjoy the improvement in the club’s accounts and the chance to once more endure the ticket office’s attempts to sell Champions League group tickets.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Matches, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.