As the opening matches of the group stage of the Europa League approach, here's a quick look at the opponents Maccabi Tel Aviv will be facing along the way
Maccabi Tel Aviv have been drawn into group F in the group stages of the Europa League, one that seems to reflect well the essence of the Europa League competition: a combination of top clubs in Europe's lesser leagues and lesser club's in Europe's top leagues. It's no coincidence that clubs like England's Tottenham Hotspur or Italy's Lazio, who in their own leagues pale somewhat in the shadow of clubs like Manchester United or Juventus, were the highlight of the Europa League group stage draw. Not just that, three of the four members of Maccabi's group reached this stage of the competition in unconventional fashion. French side Bordeaux won an automatic ticket to the group stage by winning the French Cup. Cypriot club APOEL Nicosia were already eliminated in the play-off stage but were reinstated as "lucky losers" after play-off winners, Turkish giants Fenrbahce, were suspended from European competition. And the story of how Maccabi reached the group stages without placing a boot on a play-off pitch has already been well documented in these pages. Add to that German side Eintracht Frankfurt, who reached the group stages after a double-win aggregate victory over a modest Azerbaijani club that finished second in the local league and you get a group where in fact every club has a something to prove.
French Cup winners Bordeaux spearhead the group, after reaching the last 24 in the 2012/13 season's Europa League competition. Last season they finished seventh in the French Ligue 1 and have struggled to get past fifth since winning the league title in the 2008/09 season. This season they have also started their league campaign indifferently but the Frenchmen have already appeared in 112 Europa League matches and in every case have succeeded in getting past the group stage. In 1995/96 they lost the UEFA Cup final to Bayern Munich and in the 2009/10 season they beat Maccabi Haifa twice in the group stages of the Champions League and were only stopped in the quarter finals by none other than local rivals Lyon. So as we have learned in the past, league performance is not necessarily a good measure of a team's prowess in European competition.
Pot 2 provided group F with Cypriot side APOEL Nicosia, despite their having been beaten on aggregate by Belgian club Zulte Warengem in the play-offs. On the eve of the draw, UEFA's highest court suspended play-off winners Turkish side Fenerbahce from the competition and a separate draw among the 30 play-off losers was held to determine a replacement. And ironically, from a country once torn by decades of ethnic strife between Turkish and Greek populations, the name of the Cypriot club representing the Greek population of Nicosia was chosen to replace the suspended Turkish giants. In any case, if that gives anyone the impression that Maccabi Tel Aviv will enjoy an advantage on the pitch, their error may quickly emerge. Since 2007 the Cypriot champions have won their league titles in alternate years and have made two appearances in the group stage of the Champions League, most memorably in 2011/12, when they were only stopped in the quarter finals by no less than Christiano Ronaldo's Real Madrid.
German side Eintracht Frankfurt would appear to be the "weak" sister among Maccabi Tel Aviv's rivals in group F. In reality only a rare coincidence placed the team in pot 3 and set the Israeli champions up against a particularly difficult opponent. Neither of Germany's two representatives in the draw (Freiburg being the second) played in European competition in the mid-"noughties", so in accordance with the nation's successes in Europe, the two clubs ended on even points in the UEFA rankings. As fate would have it, the two clubs jointly occupied the last place in pot 2 and the first spot in pot 3, but Freiburg's fifth place finish (one above Frankfurt) in the Bundesliga last season earned them the automatic ticket to the group stage and the upper hand (pot 2) over their league rivals. And even then, a quick look at last season's Bundesliga table shows that Freiburg's superior finish in the league was on goal difference alone. Apparently a German-Israeli encounter was on the cards in either case, but only time will tell if Frankfurt prove to be the easier of the two possibilities.
So what does all this tell us about Maccabi Tel Aviv's group in the Europa League? For openers, the Israeli champions will have to work hard to overcome rivals who routinely play such European giants as Bayern Munich and Paris Saint Germain. Secondly, the encounters between these four clubs were apparently unavoidable, given the routes they took to get to the Europa League group stage. In a group where fate is playing centre forward and "karma" is the play-maker, anything is possible if you believe it so. And even if it isn't, it's good to be a member of the group.
