Uefa Champions League no closed club
How much of cartel is the Champions League? As the bigger leagues become richer and the lesser ones more vulnerable to predatory moves for the leading players, you would imagine it would turn more rapidly into a playground for a tighter and tighter group of superclubs.
However, what the group stage of the 2015/16 edition produced was an unusually varied spread of nationalities in the knockout phase.
Forty per cent of Spain’s contingent – Valencia and Sevilla – fell by the wayside.
So did half of Germany’s – Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Monchengladbach.
England’s Manchester United were eliminated and France have just one club in the last 16.
The beneficiaries? The likes of Ghent of Belgium and PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands.
High times for the so-called Low Countries.
Casillas still unbeaten in Portugal
Though they underachieved in the Champions League, Porto go into the winter recess top of their domestic table, and their highest-profile recruit of the year can look back with reasonable satisfaction on the first transfer of his long, decorated professional career. Spain captain and goalkeeper Iker Casillas, who had suffered in his last three seasons as Real Madrid captain, has not made a perfect start to his stint at Porto, but he has looked much more like his old self with eight clean sheets and no defeats in 14 league outings.
Optimism fades for Galatasaray
Galatasaray, holders of the Turkish Super Lig title and winners of the national cup in 2014/15, thought they had done smart business ahead of launching their defence of those crowns.
Admittedly, they had seen Istanbul rivals scoop up a pair of illustrious, if past-their-peaks, strikers as Besiktas signed Mario Gomez and Fenerbahce hooked in Robin van Persie, but Galatasaray hired a pair of 2014 World Cup winners, Lukas Podolski and Kevin Grosskreutz and held on to Wesley Sneijder.
But it has not been a good four months. They are out of the Champions League and already trail league leaders Besiktas by nine points.
Mourinho’s compatriots flourish
The highest-profile Portuguese coach in the game, Jose Mourinho, may be out of work, sacked by Chelsea after the poorest sequence of results in his feted career, but the country continues to burnish its reputation as a hothouse for capable, exportable managers.
Andre Villas-Boas, the much-travelled and still youthful former assistant to Mourinho, guided Zenit-St Petersburg to the top of their Champions League group, although he has found the defence of their Russian title more awkward.
Compatriot Leonardo Jardim has Monaco second in Ligue 1. Paulo Sousa has done the same with Fiorentina in Italy.
And Marco Silva has won all his league matches since taking over at Olympiakos and is 14 points clear at the top in Greece’s lopsided top flight.
Teixeira is making noise in Ukraine
Still without a proper home because of the ongoing political and military tension in their region, Shakhtar Donetsk remain determined to re-establish their authority over the Ukrainian league, having seen Dynamo Kiev interrupt their sequence of titles – they had won five on the trot – in 2014/15.
Shakhtar lead Dynamo on goal difference at the mid-season break and are grateful for the astonishing goalscoring of Alex Teixeira with 22 in 15 games. He will be a target for several suitors in next month’s window.
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