Soccer: Fergie's luck holds in bid for five

Sir Alex Ferguson was of the opinion last week that any team trying to win five trophies in one season would need an uncommon degree of luck. If the Champions League quarter-final draw was anything to go by, United are a very lucky team indeed.

The European champions face Porto next month and then the winners of Arsenal and Villarreal in the semifinals on the road to the final in Rome.

They have avoided the pitfalls of an all-English draw and, in the Portuguese champions, have an opponent who are the least dangerous in such elite company. As for Barcelona, it is Chelsea or Liverpool who face the prospect of playing them in the semi-finals.

"United have a better draw," Rafael Benitez said yesterday and there were very few who were arguing with him.

The Liverpool manager is unwilling to betray any weakness in public so he will treat another knockout tie against Chelsea with the same cold-eyed pragmatism: another opponent to be out-thought, another strategic battle to be won.

In private, he too must be wondering at the tedium of a fifth consecutive Champions League meeting between Liverpool and Chelsea, a tie that began as a novelty in the semi-final of 2005 but has since then started to feel about as monotonous a prospect as the Boat Race.

Even Frank Lampard said this month that he and his Chelsea team-mates were "a bit fed-up" with facing Liverpool in the Champions League and you could understand what he meant.

As well as their eight games in Europe in the previous four seasons, they also faced each other in the 2005 Carling Cup final and the 2006 FA Cup semi-finals. The narrowing down of the Champions League to a small elite means that there are not many surprises left anyway.

But it is getting to the stage where it would be a shock if Chelsea and Liverpool did not draw one another.

Benitez's chief complaint was that he will have to play the first leg at Anfield, rather than the second which is what he would have preferred - with good reason, as the three meetings of these two sides in the knockout rounds have gone the way of the side that played at home in the second leg.

It is old news for everyone else bar Guus Hiddink who will become the third Chelsea manager since 2005 to take on Benitez's Liverpool. Jose Mourinho lost twice in the knockout rounds and the wound of what he

called Luis Garcia's "ghost goal" in 2005 never really healed.

Hiddink said: "It's exciting. I love the atmosphere in those tight games, it is threatening and you have to 'arm' yourself. There's very enthusiastic support for the home team and it must give even more courage and energy to the away team to face this.

"That is football. I love those circumstances. The players who can cope with that pressure are the big players, and big players show themselves on those nights."

Hiddink said that he understood Roman Abramovich's obsession with winning the Champions League.

"Realistically, we'll fight for every chance this year in the Premier League, but the Champions League is the one every manager and player dreams of," he said. "That's the ultimate challenge of a player and a coach. But you need some luck to get through and achieve that.

"Some English or Scottish managers have done it [won the Champions League]. But not with two different clubs. Winning with PSV was at the beginning of my career. Now I'm getting a little grey at the end of my career. It would be perfect for everyone. We hope we don't get injury problems, that the squad is filled with quality players. These games are so tight they can go either way."

Ferguson acknowledged this was "a good draw for us" and although Porto are 23-time champions of Portugal, that is indisputable.

They were beaten 4-0 by Arsenal at the Emirates in the group stages in September and, despite their pre-eminence domestically, they are still a selling club.

United acquired Luis Anderson from Porto in the summer of 2007. Elimination to Porto would represent a huge shock for United.

The return of Robert Pires - even older than Ryan Giggs - to Arsenal with Villarreal is an interesting aspect of a rematch of the 2006 semi-final.

"It's an interesting case," Arsene Wenger said. "We will have to keep him quiet because he's a guy who can make the difference. I still have him on the phone many times. Robert is doing very well. He is 36 this year and still playing. He's a fantastic player."

- INDEPENDENT