Technical Report 2006/07 English Section
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TECHNICAL REPORT 2006/07 ENGLISH SECTION PARTIE FRANÇAISE DEUTSCHER TEIL STATISTICS TECHNICAL REPORT This Report has been prepared by UEFA’s Technical Department to serve not only as a record of the 2006/07 UEFA Champions League but also with the aim of offering some data, reflections and opinions which, we hope, will give technicians food for thought and help to detect trends, analyse the present and lay the foundations for further enhancement of the club competition which is hailed by the critics as the best in the world. But, in football, there is no time to rest on laurels - least of all in the UEFA Champions League. The past, however, can be used as the basis for future improvement. THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT The end result of three qualifying rounds and 124 UEFA Champions League matches was a repeat of the 2005 final. But the team which trooped up the steps to receive gold medals in Athens was not the one which had jumped on to the pitchside podium in Istanbul. Those two sentences read more like statements of the obvious than technical analysis. But, in a sense, they summarise the 2006/07 campaign. Much of the plot was the same, yet the final pages yielded some interesting twists. PHOTO: MORTEN JUHL / AFP GETTY IMAGES FC København’s Swedish striker Marcus Allbäck scores the goal The presence of AC Milan and Liverpool FC - 18 times finalists that defeats Manchester United FC in the Danish capital and takes the debutants’ points tally to seven. and 12 times winners - in Athens served as a reminder that no new name had been engraved on the UEFA Champions League trophy for ten years. Chelsea FC came close - only As usual, there were thrills, spills, enormous intensity and a to be thwarted by another re-run of past history. As they sense of equality among teams who played football of the had been two years previously, the wings of their aspirations highest level. As Arsène Wenger commented on the morning had been clipped by Rafael Benítez’s team in the semi-finals. after the Athens final, “the last sixteen were all potential Repetition had also been an earlier key word when the knock- finalists. The only place to detect significant differences was out phase of the competition was kicked-off in February by during the group phase.” His viewpoint is sustainable. By and 10 of the 16 teams that had reached the same stage in the large, the favourites passed the winter ‘cut’ - some of them previous year. Among the other six, names had changed but with more ease than the final group standings would have the overall pattern remained the same. For Benfica, write us believe. FC Bayern München, Chelsea FC, Liverpool FC, Porto; for Rangers, write Celtic; for Juventus, write Roma; AC Milan, Olympique Lyonnais and Valencia CF sowed seeds for Villarreal, write their neighbours Valencia. Then return for the Spring by starting with either three straight wins or Manchester United to what the English club would regard 10 points from the first four games. Manchester United FC as its ‘rightful status’ and jot down LOSC Lille alongside wrote an exception to the rule by following-up a hat-trick Olympique Lyonnais to form the first French tandem to start of victories with two 1-0 defeats and, when 1-0 down to a knock-out phase. In other words, the teams who strode on SL Benfica at Old Trafford, flirting with a second successive to the stage after the winter recess came from the same pre-Christmas elimination. eight national associations who had supplied the last sixteen in the previous season. FC Internazionale Milano took an alternative route, losing the first two games and winning the next three thanks to an extraordinary ability to catch opponents cold with early goals. FC Porto recovered from one point in two games by taking 10 from the next four. Celtic FC relied on their traditional impregnability in Glasgow. And LOSC Lille, after one win in their first five games, recorded a second victory when they really had to on the last matchday in Milan - to the anguish of AEK Athens, ultimately undone by drawing twice with RSC Anderlecht. They finished one point behind Lille. But other groups offered evidence to support Arsène Wenger’s viewpoint, with as many as six points separating second from third. In this chapter, the hard-luck story was written by Werder Bremen, who had reached the knock-out stage in the previous season. Drawn into a group with the champions of England and Spain, they amassed ten points but White-shirted Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos gets to grips with Olympique Lyonnais midfield Florent Malouda PHOTO: JASPER JUINEN / KEYSTONE during the 2-2 draw at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. 4•5 failed to claim a prize. In retrospect, late equalisers by Leo Messi in Bremen and Didier Drogba in Barcelona changed the contours of a group in which debutants PFC Levski Sofia won no points but a great many friends by remaining loyal to their attacking game and, as their coach Stanimir Stoilov insisted, “enjoying the experience to the full”. Much the same could apply to the season’s other debutant, FC København. But, in this case, enjoyment was not confined PHOTO: MAARTJE BLIDENSTEIN / AFP GETTY IMAGES to Ståle Solbakken and his team nor the satisfaction of taking Arsenal FC manager Arsène Wenger gestures towards his seven points in a group involving three former champions of PSV Eindhoven counterpart Ronald Koeman during the 1-0 win for the Dutch side in the first knock-out round. Europe. The sell-out crowds at the Parken transmitted a loud and clear message about how much the UEFA Champions League meant to them and to Danish football and, at the soil. Many ties were decided by tiny details. FC Barcelona, for same time, underlined the footballing importance of taking instance, were let down by two defensive lapses at home the competition to as wide an audience as possible and of to Liverpool and, as Frank Rijkaard, rued afterwards, those keeping the Cinderella element alive. errors allowed Rafael Benítez’s team to repeat their tactics in the return at Anfield. When they kicked-off in Munich, But, for most of the Cinderellas, the twelve chimes rang out Real Madrid CF suffered a split-second lapse of concentration in the twelfth month. The cream of the heavyweight leagues which allowed FC Bayern to unstitch Fabio Capello’s game- had risen to the top and, once again, the entrants from plan in 10.2 seconds. eastern Europe had to be contented with places in the UEFA Cup where, by reaching the semi-finals, Werder Bremen were Indeed,‘concentration’ could be invoked as a vital ingredient to emerge as the most successful. For the rest, elimination in the recipe for ultimate success. The two teams who made from the UEFA Champions League meant that the champagne it all the way to Athens had, long since, been way off the bubbles had burst. pace in their domestic championships and were, arguably, able to focus exclusively on their European objective. The Exactly half of the 96 games had been won by the home team 2006/07 campaign certainly underlined the importance of (Group F yielded 10 home wins, one draw and one away) with total dedication, alertness, motivation and hunger. In a the other half split between 25 draws and 23 wins for the period of equality at the summit of European football, such visiting team. Nobody had emerged as clear favourites and qualities can be the decisive factors. The Athens final was equality was further underlined by a scoring chart where a re-run of Istanbul. Yet, in February, few would have Fernando Morientes of Valencia CF, Didier Drogba of Chelsea predicted it. FC and AC Milan’s Kaká were level at the top with five goals apiece. However, none of them had been regular scorers. Morientes had hit a hat-trick away to Olympiacos CFP; Drogba had scored three in Bulgaria against PFC Levski Sofia; and Kaká had struck three times in the 4-1 home win against RSC Anderlecht. Summarising the knock-out stages is a challenge. The only common denominator was the sheer intensity of 28 games which ranged from Manchester United FC’s rampant 7-1 win over AS Roma to the single goal in the 210 minutes played by AC Milan and Celtic FC or the tactical density of the Valencia CF striker Chelsea v Liverpool semi-final, resolved in the latter’s favour Fernando Morientes by ‘Pepe’ Reina’s expertise in penalty shoot-outs. During celebrates the second of his three goals against the first two knock-out rounds, goals were fairly evenly Olympiacos CFP. Two of shared between hosts and visitors; but, in the semi-finals, the group phase’s three hat-tricks were scored away only AC Milan - or, to be precise, Kaká - scored on foreign from home. PHOTO: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI / AFP / GETTY IMAGES THE MAESTROS OF AC MILAN Both teams, AC Milan and Liverpool FC, were in search of déjà vu. The last time the Rossoneri played in a UEFA Cham- pions League final in the Olympic Stadium in Athens (today the OAKA Spiros Louis Stadium), they trounced FC Barcelona by four goals to nil to win the 1994 title. Carlo Ancelotti’s class of 2007 were hoping to emulate that special Milan victory. Liverpool FC, on the other hand, had their own expectations; a rerun of their 2005 UEFA Champions League final victory against AC Milan, when the English side came from three goals down to win on a penalty shoot-out, was PHOTO: MUSTAFA OZER / AFP GETTY IMAGES more to their liking.