The last games of the Champions League group stages were played today Wednesday 9th December and the teams that will be staying in the Champions League are now planning for their group stage matches.
Fiorintina, Lyon, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Sevilla, Stuttgart, Arsenal and Olympiacos are through to the Knock out rounds of the Champions League along with Bordeaux, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Manchester United, CSKA Moskva, Chelsea and Porto.
Wednesday nights games were as exciting as Tuesdays.
Group E
Fiorintina topped the group with 15 points beating Liverpool 2-1 at Anfield. Liverpool who scored first could not do anything about Fiorintinas comeback. Lyon in the other hand frashed Debreceni 4-0 to guarantee their place in the Champions League knock out stages finishing 2nd with 13 points. Liverpool will now take part in the Europa League as one of the favourites to win.
Group F
Barcelona and Inter Milan are through to the knock out stages of the Champions League with Barcelona topping the group on 11 points and Inter Milan following with second place with 9 points. Before todays games every team in Group F had a realistic chance of going through to the knockout stages. However Barcelona came from behind to beat Dynamo Kyiv 2-1n with a beautiful Messi free kick. Inter Milan beat Ruben Kazan 2-0 with a convincing performance as many Milan players were injured or got injured during the game. All Milan substitutions were due to player injuries. Rubin Kazan will be going through to the Europa League
Group G
Sevilla and Stuttgart managed to seal their own fates and have gone through to the Knockout stages with Stuttgart beating FC Unirea 3-1 and Sevilla beating Rangers 1-0. Sevilla topped the group with 13 points and Stuttgard came second with 9 points. Unirea Urziceni have finished 3rd to go to the Europa League.
Group H
Arsenal have managed to top Group H even though they lost 1-0 to Olympiacos with 13 points. Olympiacos came second with 10 points. The game between Standard de Liège and AZ Alkmaar had a real twist to it with AZ alkmaar in the lead, the Standard’s goalkeeper Sinan Bolat came up during a corner and made it 1-1 to insure they go through to the Europa League
On December 18th, the draw for the Knockout Stage of the Champions League takes place Group winners are drawn from one pot to meet a group runner-up from the other. Teams from the same national association cannot be drawn together in the first knockout round.
The draw for the Europa League knockout stage takes place on the same day, featuring the eight teams that came 3rd in their respective groups in the Champions League. The four teams with the highest coefficient are placed into pots with the group winners; the remaining four go into the pot with the runners-up. Again, in the first knockout round, there is country protection.
