"Che, Rangers are so lucky to beat us two seasons in a row, and all at home." Although Fiorentina made it to the quarter-finals of the Champions League and knew that the defeat against Rangers was largely due to the team's need to stay in the league for the weekend, no one would consider the defeat a pleasant thing, and neither was Chong Mingge.

"There's no way around it, if these Fiorentina players are allowed to play three games halfway around the world in a week, these lads won't be exhausted to death?" Karin smiled and looked at Zhuang Mingge, who was playing a little temper, "Anyway, you have also been the president of Florence for three years, and you have seen so many big scenes, you can't let go of this little thing?" ”

"It's acceptable in terms of ambition, but ......" Zhuang Mingge leaned on the desk depressedly and said sullenly, "I still hate my team losing." ”

"Huh." Karin chuckled and placed a steaming cup of coffee on the table.

Leaving aside Zhuang Mingge's complaints at the Fiorentina headquarters, let's turn our attention back to this season's European Champions Cup.

After more than three months of competition, the group stage of the European Champions Cup in the 96-97 season has finally come to an end, Fiorentina, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Manchester United, Monaco and Dortmund, the six teams that won the group have the opportunity to directly advance to the knockout stage, and the remaining six group runners-up After some comparison, the Bundesliga club Bayern Munich and Ajax, who reached the Champions League final for two consecutive years, became the lucky ones, and they got two places to advance to the quarterfinals of Zuihou, The eight teams will be split into four groups after the draw ceremony.

Trapattoni breathed a sigh of relief after confirming the team's qualification, although Beckenbauer and other Bayern executives had previously expressed their support for his continued coaching, but if Bayern were eliminated in the group stage, the Italian coach would be unstable if he was not immediately dismissed, even if he was very hopeful of leading Bayern to their first league title in nearly three years this season.

Ajax's ability to reach the knockout rounds this time was a surprise for President Van Praag. The Dutch giants, who have suffered a lot of blood loss in the summer in the past two years, finally stumbled into the quarter-finals thanks to the few remaining main players and the friendly sponsorship of Fiorentina (two veterans, Collini and Gianni Keda, plus Inzaghi Jr. and Materazzi on loan). The large amount of broadcast income from entering the knockout rounds has emboldened Van Praag to rebuild a Young Guard, although Zhuang Mingge knows that the result of this will be nothing more than making the Dutch giants a star supermarket once again......

If someone laughs, someone will inevitably cry, and Rosenborg, who bravely brought down AC Milan in a round of zuihou, was unfortunately eliminated due to too little goal difference; Another Premier League team, Newcastle United, also missed a place in the quarterfinals of the Champions League because of a point difference, which made Alan Shearer, England's number one centre-forward, very disappointed.

Equally unlucky for Newcastle are La Liga runners-up Valencia, with the Bats also being kept out of the quarter-finals due to lack of points.

As for AC Milan, who did not even finish second in the group, I heard that Berlusconi was very angry that the team failed to qualify from the group, although he did not scold him in front of him because of his face, but with such a poor record, it is obviously impossible for Sacchi to continue to coach AC Milan.

As expected, three days after AC Milan were eliminated from the Champions League, 3 Via Tulati (where AC Milan is headquartered) announced that Arango Sacchi and Milan executives had an intimate meeting a few days ago, and after friendly negotiations between the two sides, Coach Sacchi's contract with AC Milan will be automatically terminated at the end of the season.

Due to the expansion of the Champions League group stage this time and the number of places in the knockout stage has not increased accordingly, many strong teams have been eliminated in the group stage, which has caused many teams to protest, after all, such an ending is really a bit of a cheat. Later, even Barcelona and Real Madrid, who did not have a Champions Cup mission this season, began to express to UEFA through various channels that they hoped that the Champions League knockout round would start from the round of 16, rather than the current quarterfinals.

After all, if the Champions Cup continues to play like this in the next few years, how many teams will have to become the ghosts of the existing policy.

In the face of protests from many clubs, Johansson, who had long planned to further expand the Champions League, accepted criticism from various teams very modestly this time. Immediately afterwards, Johansson announced that UEFA will further expand the UEFA Champions Cup next season, and the participating teams will increase from 24 teams this season to 32 teams, divided into 8 groups; At the end of the group stage, the top two teams from each group will qualify for the next knockout round, with the third place from each group qualifying for the UEFA Cup for that season.

Johansson's proposal was immediately supported by the vast majority of clubs. The expansion of the Champions League means that the Champions Cup will be more influential, as well as an increase in the share of TV broadcast fees for each participating team, and the fact that the third-placed teams in the group will be able to play in the UEFA Cup instead of going back to their hometowns to play in the league, so the expansion plan was unanimously approved.

However, none of this has anything to do with Fiorentina, who have already reached the knockout stages of this season's Champions League, at least this season, and Fiorentina's goal now is to play a few games before the winter break.

In the twelfth round of Serie A on December 8, the well-rested main players beat Perugia 4-0 at the Stadio Franqui, with Batistuta scoring twice and Ronaldo and Inzaghi scoring a goal each to help the team secure a big win in the league and secure their position in the table.

Three days later, in the 11th round of Serie A (because Fiorentina went to Japan to participate in the Toyota Cup, this game was postponed until now), Fiorentina played a full 90 minutes at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome against the Red Wolves led by Bianchi, and finally won three consecutive Serie A games with Ronaldo's brace, Bianchi's faint move (in the 65th minute, he replaced Totti, who played extremely well in the game) and Vieri's stunner, defeated the opponent 3-2 and won three consecutive Serie A victories!