It's not often that a team managed by Arsène Wenger gets a footballlesson but that's exactly what happened in Kyiv a decade ago.
With Andrei Shevchenko and Sergei Rebrov in their prime, and acertain Oleg Luzhny galloping down the right flank, Dynamo outclassedArsenal, winning 3-1 in the Ukraine just a fortnight after causing theGunners no end of problems at Wembley.
It was no disgrace for Wenger's side - Dynamo could and should havegone all the way in the Champions League that season but wereeventually beaten by Bayern Munich in the Semi-Finals.
Dynamo beat Arsenal again on home soil in 2003 and an emphatic 8-2aggregate victory over Spartak Moscow in this season's qualifierssuggests that, although they lack stellar names, the class of 2008 areno slouches either.
For an insight into Arsenal's first group stage opponents, we turnedto Jonathan Wilson, Eastern European football expert and author of'Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football'. Read on forhis.
STORY SO FAR
“Ithas been a pretty busy summer for John Williams the chairman and hisband of merry men. The signs have been positive. He's managed to keephold of Santa Cruz, I think Bentley leaving was inevitable, BradFriedel came a little bit out of left field but he’s signed a qualityreplacement in Paul Robinson for effectively a million pounds so notbad at all. So far results have been OK, everyone's still getting toknow each other down at the training ground but early signs arepromising. Rovers were unlucky at West Ham, they seem to be Blackburn'sbogey team and of course with Paul Ince going back down there it seemedto ratchet things up a bit. It was a little bit of a freak result andnot one you can read much into.” |
發表於 2008-9-16 07:00 PM
| 