Wednesday is Make or Break in our UEFA CUP Campaign
FK Mlada Boleslav is a top-fligh team from the Czech Republic. They are best know for their UEFA Cup first round defeat of Olympic Marseille in the 2006/07 season (4-3 aggregate).
We now sit fourth in Group C with a game in hand (along with Boleslav and Villareal). If we win, the group tightens up considerably and we will sit in first tied with Fiorentina and Villareal (if Villareal ties with Elsfborg on Wednesday) or second, tied with just Fiorentino (probably second as Villareal will surely demolish Elfsborg). If we lose, we start to get left in the dust along with the group’s bottom-ranked Elfsborg. Through some math that I don’t understand, even if we lose, we are not technically out of it yet, but I’m fairly certain that if we lose Wednesday we are done, finished, ended.
UEFA has a good background piece on the game here. There are probably, no surely, many good reasons no one has ever offered me loads of money to manage a professional football team. Having said that, I’ll still impose on you the line-up I think Ferrer should try for this match:
Macho (if fit)
Ramos—Papastathopoulos—Dellas—Arruaberrena
Toszer—–Nsaliwa
Pappas (Kone)———-Rivaldo (Cesar)
Lyberopoulos (Manduca)–Blanco
Whatever line-up he goes with, Ferrer should be worried about this game. So far this season, AEK’s away performances in Europe have been pathetic. Neither AEK fans nor management will be content with a “we are focused on winning the league” explanation for failure to at least progress in the UEFA Cup, especially against middling European opponents such as Boleslav (currently ranked 10th out of 16 teams in the Gambrinus, the first tier league of Czech football). I think Ferrer is getting the message though as early reports have it that Ferrer is starting Rivaldo against Boleslav; this is significant since Rivaldo was benched for Elfsborg and Fiorentina, as Ferrer had decided not to risk injury to his key player and save him for league games, Ferrer’s stated priority this season.
