High stage for Sevilla’s return to the Champions League

There is no truce in Europe for Sevilla. After eliminating clubs like Roma, Wolverhampton, Manchester United and Inter Milan on their express way to the sixth Europa League in their history and after coming very close to beating the fearsome Bayern Munich in the European Super Cup, Julen’s team Lopetegui returns two seasons later to the Champions League and also does so with the hardest a priori duel in the group. With no time to analyze last Saturday’s defeat in Granada, which stopped Sevilla from a good league start, after the triumphs against Cádiz and Levante and a draw with good feelings at the Camp Nou, it is the turn of the prestigious Champions League.

Monchi already knows that the seasons in the highest continental competition are not the same as in the Europa League. For this reason, footballers such as Rakitic, Óscar Rodríguez, Acuña, Idrissi and Rekik have come to Nervión to provide the Basque coach with a consistent wardrobe. The demand is so high at Sánchez-Pizjuán after a decade and a half of success that the first defeat since before the break by covid-19, in more than eight months and 18 league games, has already raised doubts. It is time to turn the page with the desired Champions League, as Sevilla dreams of emulating their last performance, in which they reached the quarterfinals in the 2017-18 campaign after eliminating Manchester United in the second round, equaling a milestone dating from the 1957 season. -58, when the Seville team also slipped into the top eight of the old European Cup. The victory at Old Trafford in that tie is the only one for the Andalusian team in their seven official duels on English soil, with three draws and three defeats.

For the category poster re-release. Opposite Frank Lampard’s Chelsea, the most reinforced team in Europe in the latest transfer market. After the summer transfer window of 2019, in which the ‘blue’ team had to comply with the FIFA sanction for irregular transfers of minors without being able to carry out any reinforcement, the London entity has thrown the rest with a astronomical investment of more than 240 million euros to try to catch up with Liverpool and Manchester City in the fight for the Premier and aspire to everything in the Champions League, where they have not surpassed a tie since 2014.

It remains to be seen if the financial muscle is capable of offering that competitive leap, because at the moment Chelsea walks with more doubts than certainties in the English championship after eight points out of fifteen possible, but the truth is that footballers like Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, Ben Chilwell or Hakim Ziyech represent a substantial improvement to a squad that already had players like Kanté, Jorginho or Mount, in addition to the Spanish Azpilicueta, Marcos Alonso and Kepa. Precisely the continuity of the Basque goalkeeper as a starter under sticks is one of the unknowns of the game after his mistake in the draw against Southampton.

To measure up to such a challenge, Lopetegui has the painful loss of Koundé, positive for covid, and that of Idrissi due to injury. The French central is together with his partner in the rear Diego Carlos and the pivot Fernando one of the members of a defensive trident that makes a difference, therefore it will be a challenge for his replacement, a priori Sergi Gómez, as it already happened against Granada . For the rest, eleven sevillista gala is expected, with Joan Jordán in the center of the field after his expulsion for the weekend in the League and with the foreseeable return of Luuk de Jong to the starting position after the opportunity to Carlos Fernández in Los Cármenes.