Inter tie with Sir Alex Ferguson's side the pick of Champions League draw
Pavlov's hounds cannot ever have slavered more than Uefa's top dogs did yesterday. The draw for the last 16 of the Champions League rapidly made moans about the tedium of the group phase inconsequential, and, just in time for the panto season, the "Special One" is centre stage once more.
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Jose Mourinho's Internazionale stand between Manchester United and a place in the quarter-finals after the Italian club were drawn to face the holders in a last 16 awash with reacquaintances and Anglo-Italian drama.
Yesterday's draw also pitted Arsenal against Roma, and Chelsea against Juventus, whose manager Claudio Ranieri will be guaranteed a warm return to Stamford Bridge if not an easy ride.
Rafael Benitez will be taking a trip to a former club when Liverpool face Real Madrid, where he worked as a coach from 1989 to 1995. Real's new manager, Juande Ramos, recently of Tottenham Hotspur, gets a rapid return to England.
All four English clubs were relieved to avoid Barcelona, the new tournament favourites. They face Lyon.
For sheer entertainment value on all levels, Mourinho versus Sir Alex Ferguson will top the bill as the pair battle for a place in the quarter-finals just as they battled when Mourinho's Porto played United – and beat them – at the same stage five seasons ago.
The memory of the Portuguese maverick charging up the Old Trafford touchline and into the British sporting consciousness after Costinha scored the 90th-minute equaliser Porto needed for a 3-2 aggregate win and progress is indelible.
Ferguson has not had the best of it against Mourinho-led teams – just one win and six defeats in 12 games to date – but there can be no better stage to begin levelling up that record.
"I am satisfied, I wanted the best and I have got the European champions," Mourinho said. "It is a team with the current Ballon D'Or winner [Cristiano Ronaldo], a great coach in Alex Ferguson and a stadium with a fantastic atmosphere. It will be unforgettable returning to Manchester."
United and Inter have met only once before in the competition, in 1998-99, when United prevailed en route to a historic treble. Omens aside, Ferguson insisted last night that he is relishing the chance to face Mourinho again anyway. "It will be interesting to come up against Jose again," he said. "He is a character with a good personality and I have always got on well with him. He knocked us out of the competition when he was at Porto, so I hope we have the luck they had in that tie this time around."
Inter's familiar names include Patrick Vieira, Hernan Crespo and Luis Figo, and their three successive Serie A titles – and current table-topping status – are evidence they are formidable opposition.
"Hopefully, we can do the job there in the first game and give ourselves a platform to take back to Old Trafford," Ferguson said. "The San Siro is a great stadium to play in. We've lost two semi-finals to Milan there so we want to go there and do better. This is the stage when the competition gets going and I think all the English teams have a good chance. I'm happy with our draw."
Juventus's Ranieri was not so pleased in drawing Chelsea – "I can't say I'm happy" – but masked his disappointment with some mind games, saying it would be a "disaster" for his former employers if Chelsea did not get through.
Ranieri spent four seasons at Stamford Bridge, taking them to the tournament's semi-finals in 2004 before Roman Abramovich ousted him to make way for Mourinho.
"It's a beautiful tie, a fascinating one and we will have to be in top form," Ranieri said. "Chelsea is a team that is constructed to win the Champions League and for Abramovich not to win it, it would be a disaster.
"For our part, we will try to stop Chelsea from reaching the top of the world, which is where Abramovich has programmed them to arrive to."
While Chelsea have never won the European Cup, Liverpool [five times] and Real Madrid [nine] have lifted it 14 times between them. Liverpool have also been runners-up twice, and Real Madrid three times. Yet they have dominated in different eras, and have met only once before in the competition, in the 1981 final, won 1-0 by Liverpool with an Alan Kennedy goal. "Mammoth," is how the Liverpool club secretary, Bryce Morrison, described yesterday's draw.
Arsenal's manager, Arsène Wenger, described the tie with Roma as "a 50-50 draw" and suggested it would be as tough as a draw against Barcelona would have been. Barcelona beat Arsenal in the 2006 final.
Acknowledging Roma's recent record of nine wins and a draw in their last 10 games in all competitions, he said they are "maybe the best team in Italy at the moment ... [they have] technical players who are comfortable in a small space."
The Frenchman added: "We have a great chance of winning the competition. I want to give that to my club because not only have I not won it, but the club have not won it. It is the most spectacular competition from now on. Any team will go for it until the last second of the game and that is where people start to enjoy it." |
