Shelbourne get their marching ordersQuote:
Shelbourne get their marching orders
Emmet Malone, Soccer correspondent
European draws: Shelbourne faced the prospect of spending the, er, holiday season in Belfast after Uefa hinted at indifference to the club's discomfort at being drawn away to East Belfast's Glentoran in the first qualifying round of the Champions League yesterday.
The first-round legs are scheduled to take place on either the 12th or 13th of July, and while all parties seemed to agree in Nyon yesterday that a meeting at the Oval on the night of the former might prove a little foolhardy, the Northern club insisted there was no reason why the game could not go ahead on the latter date.
When the IFA subsequently backed this view, Uefa appear to have accepted there was no cause for concern. Shelbourne have until Monday to formally lodge an appeal.
But with the Dublin club having turned down an offer to reverse the order of the ties to retain the advantage of playing at home in the second game, any appeal would be unlikely to succeed. So the Eircom League champions may have to settle for seeking an exemption from the rule that requires that they arrive in the home side's political jurisdiction 24 hours before the game.
"The timing of the game is disastrous," said Shelbourne chairman Finbarr Flood, "but it doesn't appear Uefa are being all that sympathetic to us."
From a football point of view, however, he welcomed the draw, which looks to be the most intriguing of the round.
Manager Pat Fenlon was also upbeat about the prospect of facing a team the Dubliners avoided in the Setanta Cup.
"They have a lot of good individual players and from what I've seen of them they play the most attractive football in the Irish League. They're certainly the best team up there, as the title wins show, but we'll still feel we can beat them over two legs."
The winners will progress to face the 1986 European champions, Steaua Bucharest, who beat CSKA Sofia, Standard Liege, Besiktas and Valencia on the way to the last 16 of the Uefa Cup last season. The Romanians won their 22nd championship in May and have just appointed Oleg Protasov, the Ukrainian who scored the Soviet Union's goal in the 1-1 draw with Ireland at the 1988 European Championships in Hanover, as their manager.
Liverpool will have few concerns as they take on Welsh champions TNS in the opening games of their title defence.
The Welsh club had, prior to the holders being allowed into the first round, floated the idea of playing Liverpool in an unofficial game for a place in the competition. As it turned out the draw produced the pairing in any case and the Welsh leg of the clash is likely to be switched to Wrexham or Cardiff.
Rafael Benitez's good fortune extended to the draw for the second round, the Merseysiders destined for a trip to Lithuania or the Faroe Islands, assuming they get past TNS.
Celtic, meanwhile, contrary to Uefa's original schedule for the draw, were handed a second-qualifying-round tie with either Artmedia Bratislava of Slovenia or Kairat Almaty of Kazakhstan.
In the Uefa Cup, the Eircom League clubs received favourable draws, Longford Town being handed a logistically straightforward trip to Carmarthen, the Welsh club that finished sixth in their league last year but qualified for this competition by virtue of having finished as runners-up in the cup to double winners TNS.
Cork City, meanwhile, were drawn against Ekranes of Lithuania, who finished second to in the league last year but have established a clear advantage at this stage in the current campaign thanks to an impressive run of recent form.
As City were unseeded, they could have been drawn against significantly more highly ranked opponents, but the tie will nevertheless present a serious challenge for the premier division leaders.
"Obviously it could have been worse," said City chairman Brian Lennox, "but it still won't be easy, particularly out there where there appear to be problems with accommodation and, as a result, training the day before the game.
"Still, we have a couple of weeks to sort everything out and we're happy enough."
© The Irish Times
