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UEFA Champions League draw: Chelsea, Ajax clash will be thriller –Cech

Klopp banks on research to survive Napoli, others

By George Aluo

Several mouth-watering ties to look forward to over the coming months! That was what the UEFA Champions League draw threw up Thursday last week in Monaco where officials of Europe’s elite clubs gathered for the fabulous event.

One of the legends that was in Monaco for the draw, Petr Cech, has, however, singled out the Chelsea, Ajax pairing in Group H, as one of the thrilling two legged ties to watch out for, as the soccer war begins later this month.

The former Chelsea keeper, who is now the club’s technical and performance advisor, told BT Sports that Stamford Bridge would definitely come alive when the very youthful Ajax side that last season surprised everybody with their fine run, reaching the semi final, come calling.

In Cech’s words… “Ajax had a fantastic season last season so they’ll want to repeat that but we are looking forward to the challenge and I hope we go through.”

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Cech stressed that the fact that Chelsea would be facing both Ajax and Lille for the first time in Europe makes it more mouth watering for fans of the club…”Our supporters will enjoy ‘new and interesting encounters’ this season, with the club facing both Ajax and Lille for the first time in Europe. They are new teams for Chelsea fans and for the club, so it’s going to be new and interesting encounters.”

The former goalkeeper added that the group is an open one in which any of the teams can go through.

“It’s not an easy group because it’s a very even group. All the teams have a lot of quality. It’s one of those groups where everybody can beat everybody and this makes it very interesting. But we can be satisfied with the draw. We avoided long travels so that’s one of the positives. We would do our best to go through. Once you’re in the knockout stages anything can happen but our first target is to qualify for the next round.”

For the second successive year defending champions Liverpool and Napoli were drawn together at the group stage and Klopp is looking forward to facing the Serie A club once again. Last term, Liverpool lost 1-0 in Naples before beating their Italian opposition with the same scoreline on Merseyside.

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Asked for his reaction to Liverpool’s draw, Klopp told the club’s official website: ‘Napoli again! I don’t know how often I’ve now played against Napoli, but they’re obviously a very experienced side. ‘I will need now to have another, closer look at Genk and Salzburg, but I already know they are very young, very exciting and very fresh, so it will be interesting, 100 per cent. I don’t think I’ve ever played against Salzburg or Genk, so that’s interesting. ‘It’s how it always is, it’s not an easy group and not a group where we can hide behind anybody. We have to try everything to go through, but we are really looking forward to it like always. We will do our analysis and research on all three teams, but we know they all played exceptional seasons last year. ‘Of course, Salzburg are famous for bringing through new players, like they did with Sadio [Mane] and Naby [Keita] – they’ve found a lot of others, too. It will be really interesting.”

Interestingly, Slavia Prague’s delegates could only laugh when they were placed in the Champions League group of death where they face Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund and Inter Milan.

The Czech champions only qualified mid last week when they beat CFR Cluj of Romania 1-0 as Jan Boril’s goal secured a 2-0 aggregate victory.

 

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