Champions League draw: Manchester United get shot at redemption against Villarreal

Manchester United felt that luck wasn’t with them when drawn with PSG, RB Leipzig and the Turkish champions Basaksehir in last season’s Champions League group stage. United started well with wins in Paris and by putting five past the Germans, but then Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side fell apart and failed to qualify.

United dropped into the Europa League, looked much more convincing and reached the final where Villarreal prevented Ole Gunnar Solskjaer lifting his first trophy as United manager.

The Norwegian was hurting after that defeat on penalties and felt a pain in his stomach all summer. It’s little consolation, but United have the chance to avenge the loss in Gdansk after drawing Villarreal in Champions League. The two teams have met five time before since 2005 — and every game was a stalemate after 90 minutes, with the first four ending 0-0. At least this one can’t go to penalties.

Villarreal started this season with two league draws and a defeat to Chelsea in the Super Cup. Their 24,500 capacity stadium had prices as steep as the away end for past encounters and Villarreal are in the competition after winning the Europa League. Not that United fans want reminding of that.

Three-time European champions United avoided powerhouses such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, PSG, Dortmund and Sevilla in the draw who were all in the same pot, having not won their leagues last season. Long gone are the days when United were Pot 1 stalwarts.

The schedule of the matches will be decided in the coming days, with United also drawn with Atalanta, who finished third in Serie A, before reigning champions Juventus on goal difference. Like United, Atalanta lost only six of their 38 league games last term and no Italian team scored more than their 90 goals. In the Champions League, Atalanta went out to Real Madrid.

United have never played Atalanta, from Bergamo near Milan, in a competitive game. Gian Piero Gasperini’s attacking side play in the remodelled Gewiss Stadium, capacity 21,747.

He’s been in charge since 2016 and turned the provincial club into one of the most exciting in football, famed for goals and a 3-4-3 formation. They qualified for the Champions League for the first time in their history in 2019 and made it out of the group in each of the last two seasons.

The two clubs did business last season when United signed Amad Diallo and United’s John Murtough, now the club’s football director, had to quarantine on his return from the city hit hard in the first wave of Covid.

Hopefully, United fans should be spared quarantine if they can travel to a first batch of away games in Europe since a trip to Bruges in February 2020 — though the fate of travelling fans is still to be decided by Uefa, with a decision expected within a week. Even if Uefa give the green light for travelling fans, individual countries may decide against them. There are currently no away fans in La Liga matches, where the capacities are limited to 30 per cent because of Covid.

The third team in United’s group are more familiar foes. Young Boys, from the Swiss capital Bern, qualified after beating Romanians Cluj and then Hungarians Ferencvaros 3-2 home and away in the Champions League play-off. They won the Swiss league by an astonishing 31 points last season, losing only two of their 36 games.

Young Boys haven’t started this season in the same form, winning one, drawing one and losing one of their three games so far under manager David Wagner, recently of Huddersfield Town and Schalke, where he was sacked a year ago after 18 games without a win. United overcame a very noisy home crowd before beating Young Boys home and away in 2018, en route to games against PSG and Barcelona in the knockout stages.

United need to impress more in the competition this season than last. The team haven’t gone beyond the last eight in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era and have become a second-tier European side, more effective in the Europa League which Jose Mourinho lifted in 2017 than the competition one of the three biggest clubs in world football really should be reaching the latter stages most seasons.

Solskjaer has a strong squad now. They must prove their worth by getting through this Champions League group.

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Who was Alfred Nobel?

The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.

In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.

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Coming soon

Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura

When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Akira Back Dubai

Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.

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Tickets

Tickets start at Dh100 for adults, while children can enter free on the opening day. For more information, visit www.mubadalawtc.com.

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1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull

2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight

3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge

4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own

5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed

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Normcore explained

Something of a fashion anomaly, normcore is essentially a celebration of the unremarkable. The term was first popularised by an article in New York magazine in 2014 and has been dubbed “ugly”, “bland’ and "anti-style" by fashion writers. It’s hallmarks are comfort, a lack of pretentiousness and neutrality – it is a trend for those who would rather not stand out from the crowd. For the most part, the style is unisex, favouring loose silhouettes, thrift-shop threads, baseball caps and boyish trainers. It is important to note that normcore is not synonymous with cheapness or low quality; there are high-fashion brands, including Parisian label Vetements, that specialise in this style. Embraced by fashion-forward street-style stars around the globe, it’s uptake in the UAE has been relatively slow.