2019/2020 CL Group G: Zenit - Benfica - Lyon - Leipzig

[Dragonite]

[Dragonite]

Zenit



--> 7th participation in the Champions League
--> Advanced from the group stages 3 times (50%)
--> Manager: Sergei Semak (1-0-0)
--> Squad's CL experience: 214 matches




Benfica



--> 15th participation in the Champions League
--> Advanced from the group stages 5 times (36%)
--> Manager: Bruno Lage (0-0-0)
--> Squad's CL experience: 247 matches




Lyon



--> 16th participation in the Champions League
--> Advanced from the group stages 11 times (73%)
--> Manager: Sylvinho (0-0-0)
--> Squad's CL experience: 196 matches




Leipzig



--> 2nd participation in the Champions League
--> Never advanced from the group stages
--> Manager: Julian Nagelsmann (0-3-3)
--> Squad's CL experience: 91 matches






https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleagu ... ml?iv=true

[bugylibicska]

Zenit's A squad includes 23 players:

Goalkeepers

99 Andrey Lunev
41 Mikhail Kerzhakov
78 Alexander Vastyutin

Defenders

3 Douglas Santos
6 Branislav Ivanovic
15 Vyacheslav Karavaev
24 Emanuel Mammana
4 Yordan Osorio
44 Yaroslav Rakitskyi
19 Igor Smolnikov

Midfielders

5 Wilmar Barrios
21 Alexander Erokhin
32 Matías Kranevitter
14 Daler Kuzyaev
20 Robert Mak
27 Magomed Ozdoev
17 Oleg Shatov
91 Alexey Sutormin
18 Yuri Zhirkov

Forwards

7 Sardar Azmuon
11 Sebastian Driussi
22 Artem Dzyuba
8 Malcom

[Dragonite]

Zenit is back to the CL, after missing the last 3 editions.
They’ve been winning their groups for the last 4 seasons, they started with their 2015 CL group (Gent, Valencia and Lyon), continued with their 2016 EL group (AZ Alkmaar, Maccabi Tel-Aviv and Dundalk), then again in the 2017 EL (Real Sociedad, Rosenborg and Vardar) and finally in last season’s EL (Slavia Prague, Bordeaux and FC Copenhagen). Can they do it again?

They have good and bad recent memories from all their current group opponents. That 2015 CL group win was followed by elimination against Benfica in the last 16 round with two defeats. In the previous season they defeated Benfica twice in the group stages. And before that in 2012 they were also eliminated by Benfica in the last 16 round, with one win and one defeat. So overall against Benfica they have a neutral record, 3-0-3.

Against Lyon they have better memories, with two wins in that 2015 CL group, where Zenit was the group winner and Lyon was last placed. And finally against Leipzig they had bad memories; with elimination in the EL last 16 in 2018.

Looking at CL only, their results resemble Shakhtar’s, they alternate ups and downs. If the pattern continues, this season it’s a “down” and they won’t advance from this group.


Benfica likes to say that they’ll be playing the CL for the tenth consecutive season, and only Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern have been doing it for longer. It’s true. What they don’t like to say is what they have been doing there. They only advanced from the group stages in three of these nine participations (unlike the trio that they’re trying to compare themselves with, that not only always advanced from the group stages, but also won the competition 4, 2 and 1 times respectively in that period). And in one of these nine “participations”, “participate” as actually all they could do, with an infamous 0-0-6, they were unable to get a single point against anyone.

Last season it wasn’t so bad anymore and they already “improved” from 0 points to 7 (it couldn’t get any worse than 0, could it?)… But 6 of these 7 points were against a harmless team, AEK Athens, and this time they don’t seem to have a harmless opponent in the group anymore.

They have a new coach (compared to last season’s CL campaign), Bruno Lage. Last season in the EL he started well eliminating Galatasaray, but then he needed extra-time in the following round to eliminate Dinamo Zagreb, and in the quarter finals he was eliminated by Eintracht Frankfurt, despite playing almost the entire first leg in numerical advantage. 10 points in 6 matches, which could be enough to advance in this CL group… but this CL group may be harder than those six EL matches, and/or Benfica’s squad may also be worse.

Benfica is proud with how much they got for João Félix, and they should be. 126M€ is a fantastic amount to get for any player, and for this player it’s even more impressive, who is this guy?! A “nobody” with 77 minutes of CL experience in a meaningless match and 1 cap for his country. Even 12.6M€ would be much more than what he’s worth! If they were smart, they could recruit several great players with (some of) that money. But they’re not smart, so they already burned a good part of it in worthless players like Raúl De Tomás and Carlos Vinícius. Two or three more like these and all the money from João Félix’s transfer will be gone.


Lyon can’t get 126M€ for a single player, but with three players they can get there too. They got 48M€ for Mendy, 60M€ for Ndombele and 19.75M€ for Fekir. Again strange that the best player from these was also the cheapest, Fekir!!

Their negative record against Zenit was already mentioned, but against Benfica they have better memories, with a home win and an away defeat in 2010, but Lyon finishing second in the group above Benfica who was only third.

They never played against Leipzig but they faced Leipzig’s coach Julian Nagelsmann last season when he was in charge of Hoffenheim, and the results were a 3-3 away draw and a 2-2 home draw, with Lyon advancing in the second place while Hoffenheim was last placed.

Lyon had a very strange decision this season, when they picked Sylvinho to be their manager. It’s the first time that they’ll have a foreign coach, but being foreign isn’t even the problem, the problem is that it’s also Sylvinho’s first job as a main coach. They should have picked either someone who already proved himself somewhere else or at least someone with a strong link to the club. Sylvinho is neither.


This looks like the perfect group for pot 4 team Leipzig to thrive, doesn’t it?
Zenit which they already defeated last year in the EL, Benfica who only got 7 points in its last 12 CL matches, and Lyon currently in a CL winless streak of 7 matches. Leipzig will win this group easily, won’t they?

I say that Leipzig also has big problems of its own. For starters the fact that they’re in pot 4 means that they got worse results than all its opponents over the last half-decade. They even got the indecency of not advancing from an EL group, something that never happened to Zenit, Benfica or Lyon whenever they were there.

Then, they also have the least experienced squad in this group by far.

Last but not least, their manager Julian Nagelsmann only won one of his fourteen international matches. He may improve in charge of a better team, but 1 win in 14 matches is always awful regardless of the circumstances.

Although Leipzig’s squad is inexperienced, their recruitment strategy is bright, they’re not interested in signing veteran players that were good somewhere else in the past but may not be anymore, they want young talented players with their best years still ahead of them, not behind.


Prediction
1. Leipzig
2. Benfica
3. Zenit
4. Lyon

[Michael S Collins]

What a difficult group to predict. Any 4 teams could finish top or bottom. So, I'll just predict it in order of teams I want to see more of, based on their usual and recent aesthetics on pitch!

1. Lyon
2. RB Leipzig
3. Zenit
4. Benfica

Let's return to this in December when everyone can point out I predicted the table upside down or something!

[bjkman1903]

A very competitive group, in which anything could happen.

Zenit are back in CL as Russian champions. Honestly, I don't know much about them but it seems to me that Russian teams were disappointing in CL lately.

Benfica are a CL regular now. They've lost to a great Ajax side last season but this time I expect them to qualify. They are probably slightly stronger than the other teams in this group and have more experience in this level.

Lyon I was quite impressed by them at the beginning of the French season. With the arrival of Sylvinho as manager and Juninho, the first results were quite promising. But from matchday 3 on, they were quite disappointing. Which Lyon side we will see now ? the team that scored 9 goals in 2 games in august ? hard to say.

Leipzig were the strongest team from pot 4. They have a decent chance against all their opponents (they even eliminated Zenit two years ago).
I think that they have enough experience at this level now and they will finally qualify.

Prediction :

1. Benfica
2. Leipzig
3. Zenit
4. Lyon

[Firnen]

Leipzig and Lyon advance, Benfica 3rd, Zenit 4th.

[Lyonnais]

What a difficult group to predict. Any 4 teams could finish top or bottom.

yes indeed ...

I have no idea myself. Leipzig look like pretty good and could get one of the two qualification spots. For the other one, difficult to say (for me) as I have no real idea how Zenit and Benfica are strong.

My beloved OL is still very unpredictable. In recent years they used to be rather good in the big games, hopefully it will be the same this season (at least for the big games) but we lost 3 talents this summer and it's not sure that the team is a competitive as it used to be.

[Lyonnais]

Not sure that it helps making an opinion in this group, but here are the 'market values' of each club as per transfermarkt

(in million euros)

521 LEIPZIG (Werner 65, Konaté 45, Poulsen 35, Klostermann 30, Upamecano 30, etc.)

340 LYON (Depay 45, Aouar 45, Dembélé 27, Lopes 25, Thiago Mendes 25, Christensen 25, etc..)

311 BENFICA (Grimaldo 32, R.Dias 32, R.Silva 28, Pizzi 25, de Tomas 20, etc.)

213 ZENIT (Malcom 40, Barrios 18, Azmoun 17, Dzyuba 16, Driussi 16, etc.)

[wannabeontop]

RBL just became favourite to top this group. A solid performance.

[Dragonite]

Lyon’s CL winless streak increased to 8 matches with their draw against Zenit.
On one hand it was an improvement compared to their previous results against Zenit (two defeats). On the other hand, the winless streak keeps growing…

The good news for them is that they have Benfica (CL’s Santa Claus) in their group, so when they meet them (if it doesn’t happen before) the winless streak should finally end.

Benfica has now lost 11 of their last 14 CL matches!!
If it wasn’t for the fortune of having AEK Athens in this list, I think they’d be in a winless streak of 14 matches now.
This is humiliating; any team should be ashamed of it.
Yet they don’t seem to be bothered with it, for them as long as they win their domestic match against Moreirense everything is fine.
They “prefer” to win domestically and lose internationally than the opposite… as if this was a choice that they can make! It’s just an excuse, they know that they’ll win domestically no matter what, and they think that they’re not good enough to face foreign opposition, so they just tell this “story” about what they allegedly “prefer” and “choose”.
Benfica is awesome at telling “stories”…

[bugylibicska]

Zenit are favourites now - for third place! Seriously this is a tough group to predict. Lyon are now in the driving seat, but I wouldn't count out even Benfica for the EL. The next 2 rounds could be decisive, or everything could go down to the wire.

[Dragan Mance]

Benfica is real trash... They did not do anything important in Europe in last 3-4 years.

Leipzig will advance, they are good enough, so it will be between Lyon and Zenit. I would give more chances to Lyon, because last round will be Benfica-Zenit and Lyon-Leipzig.

[FrancoisD]

GS coefficient based projection (*) after MD2:

Code: Select all

1 Zenit St. Petersburg     72     DW+++= 14  4+3   2     +5
2 Olympique Lyon           61     DW-=-+  8  3+1   1+2   +1
3 Benfica                  68     LL+===  6  2+1   5     -2
4 RB Leipzig               22     WL--=-  4  2     3+3   -4

(*) better coefficient gives 1-0 home win and 0-0 away draw, except pot 4 - pot 1 (away win 0-1). Played CL matches coded as W/D/L, future matches +/=/-.

[og2002gr]

Zenit keep impressing me. I expected them to be dead last, but they are leading the group!
They are the best reason why Russia has its chances for 6th place.

Benfica record is so bad, than even people who were furious against me when I stated they are frauds, now they judge them harder than me
Last 5 seasons: 7-3-16 or 0,92 points/game, always with high seeding and always with ridiculous draws! Pathetic!

Lyon step up after the MD1 loss of points with an impressive win away.
Group winners?

Leipzig just after their great first game, put themselves in a bad position.
Double games against Zenit will be crucial.

But I won't be surprised all 4 teams exchange points and we have a balanced situation after MD4!