UEFA ruins its prestige in the most ridiculous Champions League draw in history
It was not the best time for UEFA to fail in something as simple as a draw. That mechanism that has been carried out countless times and that never fails because the human factor and the conditioning factors are added to the computer, always infallible. Well, all that fell apart in Nyon under the smiling gaze of Arshavin. The guy who left a brothel drunk and left the area on the back of a horse in St Petersburg months after hanging up his boots. He didn't care about anything. And so did UEFA.
A Villarreal-Manchester United and a possible Atlético de Madrid-Liverpool tie sparked all-out war between Real Madrid and UEFA. Los Blancos had been drawn against Benfica in a duel that was more than beneficial for Los Blancos. But the teams had already raised their voices against the UEFA operator's ball exchange system, which was governed by the computer programme that coloured the teams' balls. It was a magnificent chaos that portrayed UEFA as Florentino Pérez was caressing his Superliga project from Madrid.
The Spanish teams' Twitter accounts were fuming with tweets about the rivals first and complaints later as UEFA followed suit with a message devastating to their interests: "Following a technical problem with a third-party service provider's software that instructs referees which teams are eligible to play each other, a material error occurred in the draw for the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League. As a result, the draw has been declared void and will be redrawn in full at 15:00".
The law is on Real Madrid's side if they wanted to go to CAS on what they call the principle of preservation of procedural acts not vitiated, i.e. that until their pairing everything worked well and the system had not failed. But Real Madrid have accepted that the new pairing will be against the PSG of Messi, Ramos... and Mbappé.
Emilio Butragueño stepped in front of the home microphones to brand what had happened at UEFA headquarters as "a regrettable and difficult to understand draw". One more nail in the coffin that the white team has been putting in the coffin of European football's governing body for months.
The second draw brought better luck for Atlético de Madrid, who will face Manchester United, and Villarreal, who will play Juventus. There are still two months to go and a lot to talk about, but the last word has already been spoken and the course of the draw will be remembered for posterity.
Real Madrid will travel to Paris on 15 February and host PSG at the Bernabéu on 9 March.
Atletico Madrid will host Manchester United at the Metropolitano on 23 February and travel to England on 15 March.
Villarreal host Juventus at El Madrigal on 22 February and travel to northern Italy on 16 March.
The remaining fixtures pit Sporting Lisbon-Manchester City; Salzburg-Bayern Munich; Inter Milan-Liverpool; Chelsea-Lille and Benfica-Ajax.
The Europa League draw has left Barcelona in a bad way and they continue to add to the problems of their difficult existence. On 17 February they will host Napoli at home and return the visit to the Diego Armando Maradona stadium on 24 February. It is the preliminary round of that competition that would lead to the round of 16.
Betis face Zenit on 17 and 24 February with the return leg at the Villamarín.
Real Sociedad will play Leipzig on the same days, with the return leg at Anoeta.