JOIN USArsenal face Borussia fire
Borussia Dortmund are hoping attacking midfielder Shinji Kagawa, who returned after two years at Manchester United, can help lift the German team past Arsenal in the Champions League on Tuesday despite a growing injury list.
The 2013 Champions League runners-up host Arsenal on Tuesday after the two sides were drawn together in the group stage for the second season in a row. Kagawa, a crowd favourite who won back-to-back league titles in 2011 and 2012 before leaving for United, returned this season and scored in his first match back, a 3-1 win over Freiburg on Saturday.
Kagawa's return could not have come at a better time with Dortmund missing midfielders Nuri Sahin, Marco Reus, Jakub Blaszczykowski and Ilkay Guendogan along with captain Mats Hummels for the Group D opener. "We have a team with a lot of depth and with a very high level," said a beaming Kagawa. "When we play well together then we are extremely strong."
Arsenal's own Manchester United signing Danny Welbeck failed to score on his own league debut against Manchester City on Saturday but Arsene Wenger's team still snatched a 2-2 draw ahead of their game at Dortmund.
A late Martin Demichelis header denied Wenger's team what could have been a memorable win. The French coach, however, has his own injury concerns with Mathieu Debuchy injured on Saturday and doubtful for the game.
On the positive side, Wenger enjoyed watching creative midfielder Jack Wilshere hit top form. "He's coming back physically to his level where he can be. Unfortunately it takes time to find that fraction of a second where you feel you can make a difference," said the coach.
It was Alex Ferguson who once noted famously that watching the World Cup was as excruciating as visiting the dentist while offering the counterpoint that the Champions League was much more fun, quite the best competition in football.
Holders’ jinx
Surely, as Real prepare to start their defence at the Bernabeu against Basel, President Florentino Perez must believe they can break the holders' jinx, especially if Cristiano Ronaldo can maintain his supersonic form of last term, with his record 17 goals in a campaign studding his team’s triumph.
Ronaldo himself predicts he is not finished yet, stating: "In terms of individual achievements I'm going to try to break my own records. I know it's tough, but I'm going to try."
Indeed, it seems a decent bet that this season, both Ronaldo and Messi will shoot past the all-time tournament record of 71, held by Real's former immaculate marksman, Raul.
Traditionalists may pine for the days before the occasionally less than gripping group stages when a big fish could be netted early in a straight knockout competition. Yet there is always room for a major casualty to go tumbling before the end of the year.
For a bit of romance, though, look no further than Anfield where the returning five-times champions Liverpool will play host to the unsung Bulgarian side Ludogorets and their amazed new celebrity, Cosmin Moti.
Defender Moti was the unlikely hero who, pressed into emergency action as substitute goalkeeper in Ludogorets' qualifying playoff against Steaua Bucharest, scored one and saved two in his side's victorious shootout. "Everything in football is possible," said the man who had laughed that Steaua's penalty takers could not possibly know what he was going to do because he did not know himself.
With Ludogorets' first-choice keeper Vladislav Stoyanov suspended, their coach Georgi Dermendzhiev suggested, perhaps only half in jest, that Moti might end up in goal at Anfield. It would not be just Liverpool's Kop, who have long believed in Champions League fairytales, but the entire tournament which would adore that.