Arsenal in Europe 1999-2000

News
(last updated
30/09/99)

UEFA Cup

Final

Arsenal vs Galatasaray

Parken Stadium, Copenhagen. Wednesday 17th May.

See match preview page for Cimbom links, team news, ticket & travel news, pubs in Copenhagen, etc etc.

semi-finals

06/04/00  Arsenal     1 - 0   [an error occurred while processing this directive] (see reports)
20/04/00  [an error occurred while processing this directive]          1 - 2    Arsenal (see reports)

The other semi features Leeds against Galatasaray (Turkey leg first)
Home leg is live on Sky Sports 1, away leg on Sky Sports News (digital only).

quarter-finals

16/03/00 Arsenal       2-0  [an error occurred while processing this directive] (see reports)
23/03/00 [an error occurred while processing this directive]  2 - 4  Arsenal (see reports)

Arsenal win 6-2 on aggregate

4th round

02/03/00  Arsenal   5 - 1 [an error occurred while processing this directive] (see reports)
09/03/00  [an error occurred while processing this directive] 1 - 2 Arsenal

Winners to play either Parma or Werder Bremen in the quarter-final. See also this newsreel item.

3rd round

25/11/99 Arsenal 3 - 0 Nantes Atlantique (see reports)
09/12/99 Nantes  3 - 3  Arsenal (see reports)

Arsenal win 6-3 on aggregate

see also this NewsReel item and the UEFA site for the full 3rd round draw.

UEFA Cup entry & coverage

With 1 match to go in the Champions League first group stage, the places in group B were already decided. Arsenal have finished third and go into the next (third) round of the UEFA Cup.

The third round matches will be on Thursday November 25th and Thursday December 9th (see Calendar for dates of subsequent rounds). The draw will take place on Friday November 5th (the day after the second round second leg ties).

See this AFCi page for a list of the teams in the UEFA Cup (more useful links in the links section at the foot of this page)

No definite news yet about TV coverage. ITV have said they won't be bidding. OnDigital are keen to get the deal having made such a big thing out of the fact that they had Arsenal's European games before. But they're likely to face competition from Sky.

Update 13/11/99
Sky won the race, but have said that they'll be showing our home games on one of their "regular" Sports channels (ie SS1 2 or 3) rather than the digital-only or PPV channels.
Away matches will be on Sky Digital services only. Arsenal released a statement on 11/11/99 saying "Arsenal can confirm that the Club has negotiated that all of the matches at Highbury in The UEFA Cup will be covered by one of Sky Sports' main three channels and on Sky Digital. This is to ensure that all Arsenal supporters who subscribed to OnDigital to follow our UEFA Champions League progress, will be able to watch Arsenal participate in The UEFA Cup. ". So, hands up who subscribed to OnDigital just to watch the home games? Just to watch the first legs? Yup, it sucks.

Champions League: Group stage 1

Arsenal are in...

Group B: final standings

                      Pl  W   D   L   F   A  Pts
[an error occurred while processing this directive]  6   4   2   0  19   9  14
[an error occurred while processing this directive]  6   2   3   1   9   7   9
[an error occurred while processing this directive]  6   2   2   2   9   9   8
[an error occurred while processing this directive]  6   0   1   5   4  16   1

Barcelona and Fiorentina go through to stage 2.
Arsenal qualify for round 3 of the UEFA Cup.

Match day 6: 3rd November

AIK         (1) 2 - 3 (1)  Arsenal (see reports)
Fiorentina  (1) 3 - 3 (2)  Barcelona

Match day 5: 27th October

Arsenal     (0) 0 - 1 (0)  Fiorentina (see reports)
Barcelona   (3) 5 - 0 (0)  AIK

Match day 4: 19th October

Arsenal     (1) 2 - 4 (2)  Barcelona (see reports)
Fiorentina  (?) 3 - 0 (0)  AIK

Match day 3: 29th September

Barcelona   (1) 1 - 1 (0)  Arsenal (see reports)
AIK Solna   (0) 0 - 0 (0) Fiorentina

Match day 2: 22nd September

Arsenal     (1) 3 - 1 (0)  AIK Solna (see reports)
Barcelona   (2) 4 - 2 (0)  Fiorentina

Match day 1: 14th September

Fiorentina  (0) 0 - 0 (0) Arsenal  (see report)
AIK Solna   (?) 1 - 2 (0) Barcelona

Arsenal Fixtures

Dates link to match reports/previews.
Team names link to ArseWeb's page on that team (links, head-to-head stats, etc).

See above for results. dates below link to reports/previews.

Tue Sep 14  A  Fiorentina
Wed Sep 22  H  AIK
Wed Sep 29  A  Barcelona
Tue Oct 19  H  Barcelona
Wed Oct 27  H  Fiorentina
Tue Nov   2 A  AIK

and Man Utd will be playing on the same days, thus giving Carlton, the ITV station for London, the opportunity to show some of United's games in preference to ours just like they did last year!
Chelsea will play on the other day.

The only way to watch all Arsenal's matches live in the UK is to get OnDigital. Note that pubs etc are not allowed to screen OnDigital's coverage.

News

30/09/99 News site for anti-Carlton campaign

A guy called Tommy from the Arsenal mailing list has set up a site called Football Fans Against Carlton (FFAC), with info, clippings, and a list of addresses etc for complaints to go to.

27/09/99 More on Carlton

Peter Milton suggests another avenue: complaining to the Office of Fair Trading about how Carlton's decision effectively blackmails people into subscribing to Digital TV (which makes more money for Carlton). The OFT only take complaints in writing, so fax them on 0171-211-8404, or write to them at The Office of Fair Trading, Field House, Breams Buildings, London EC4 1PR.

Adrian Jones points out that the ITC say they're unable to do anything till after the programme has been shown on Wednesday. So they can't help us now, but it'll be worth swamping them then.

It's also worth pointing out that while writing to the club may be wworthwhile, they are also set to make money out of Carlton's decision. The match is being beamed back to Highbury (usual conditions).

Judging by your emails, it seems that Carlton have resorted to sending a standard email reply to complaints from Arsenal fans about Wednesday's coverage. This means that more than likely they're not even reading our complaints. Still, numbers help, so keep complaining, but this makes it even more true that by far the most effective method is telephone.

Actually the very best way is to write a letter, but it's less immediate. So our suggestion would be, if you can do it, to ring Carlton and then follow this up with a letter.

Anyway, here is the standard email response (please let us know if you get anything different from them!):

Your e-mail addressed to the Chairman has been passed to me as I am head of the departmen that deals with viewers' comments.
The choice of matches is a very difficult decision to make. As we proved last year we have been willing to opt out of Man Utd if we thought that this was in the interest of all our viewers. We do not expect Arsenal fans to agree with our decision, however we hope they will understand that we have to base our decisions on what we believe is of most interest to the majority of our viewers. On the advice of our sports department, which has many years of experience of having to make such difficult choices, we have therefore decided to show as our main match on Wednesday 29th September Man Utd v Olympique Marseilles. Our decision was also based on the fact that our audience research has repeatedly shown that in the Carlton region more viewers want to watch Man Utd.
We are obviously sorry if this upsets Arsenal fans but the whole match will be available live on ITV2. There will also be extended highlights on ITV between 2330 and 0035.
The decision about which matches we will screen in future will be based on the same criteria. If we believe that the majority of all the viewers in the Carlton region will be attracted to an Arsenal match we will have no hesitation in opting out of the Network.

See also the Barcelona match preview for more on this.

20/09/99 Complaining to Carlton

Please see preview page for Barcelona vs Arsenal for stuff on Carlton's decision to show Man Utd in preference to Arsenal again, including details of how to complain.

10/09/99 Full squad announced

At last, AFCi have published our full squad for this years Champs League, including all the B squad players. See here for the list, and this newsreel item for an explanation.

07/09/99 Arsenal nab youngster from next week's opponents!

The club have confirmed the signing of Niccolo Galli. See this newsreel piece for more on this, plus why this match is going to be a feast of games console advertising!!

07/09/99 Arsenal complain to UEFA over Nou Camp Ticket allocation

Despite having a capacity of getting on for 120,000, Barcelona have only given Arsenal 1400 tickets for the match on 29th September. They say that this is because they have 100,000 season ticket holders who will all want to exercise their right to claim their seats for this match. As far as we can tell, this leaves considerably more than 1400.
Thus there seems a very good chance that Arsenal fans will turn up in the Catalan capital without tickets, and that there will be black market tickets available to them. So we'll have English fans outside the stadium frustrated by the lack of tickets, and English fans inside the stadium mixed in with the Spanish fans. As usual - a recipe for trouble, and trouble which will be blamed on the English fans.
UEFA do not have a rule on this as such. They expect clubs to reach an agreement. But there is a right of appeal and so we'll just have to wait and see if UEFA do the right thing. Arsenal would not be able to retaliate by giving Barceolna a similarly ridiculous number of tickets to the Wembley leg, because the authorities in this country are more sussed about how to avoid trouble, and so would not allow it. Anyway, 2 wrongs do not make a right.

03/09/99 OnDigital coverage

It looks like our previous information was premature. OnDigital subsribers will be able to watch all Arsenal matches live. On Tuesday nights when there are 2 matches both will be carried on their digital service, and on Wednesdays one will be on ITV (terrestrial) and the other on ITV2 (on OnDigital). See OnDigital's TV schedule page (thanks to Chris, Ian, and several other people who emailed me pointing this out)

27/08/99 Tuesday night TV

News on OnDigital's approach to those Tuesday nights when there will be a clash of fixtures. Apparently one match will be shown in full live, and on another channel there will be a programme which kind of flicks between the 2. Seems a bit strange to me, why not just show the other match in full....? (see above!)

16/08/99 more on UK digital TV

Greg Stuart writes with the following handy info:

It's possible that there will be clashes on Wednesday nights. We're assuming that they'll try to have one English team playing on the Tuesday and one on the Wednesday but it may not be possible, and in any case there's a chance that Chelsea will qualify too!

Wednesday night matches will be on ITV and ITV2, the latter being digital/cable only (NOT satellite as things stand). out experience from last year is that there's no guarantee that even the London region would choose an Arsenal match over one featuring "national heroes" (!) Man Utd. This means that OnDigital will be required to be able to watch all the Arsenal games.

Greg also warns that many people find that OnDigital doesn't work straight out of the box - they need to get an engineer round to sort out their aerial. It's not particularly expensive (£40) but don't leave it till the last minute to sign up.

There's a postcode check to see if you can get OnDigital at their web site.

25/06/99 UK TV coverage

For those who haven't heard... this season's matches will be broadcast live by ITV and OnDigital. Wednesday matches will be available to all on ITV, but as things stand, to catch Tuesday matches you need to subscribe to OnDigital. Arsenal's matches will be shared equally between these 2 days.

08/06/99 New Format

See this UEFA page for details of the new format to be used for this season.

UEFA also have this page showing the teams, both definite and provisional, that have qualified for the various competitions.

Some key points:

Matches will take place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
There are 2 group phases.
Group phase 1 consists of 8 groups of 4.
The top 2 in each group progress automatically to group phase 2
Teams that finish 3rd in their group transfer to the 3rd round (last 32) of the UEFA Cup! (see this UEFA page on that competition)
Group phase 2 consists of 4 groups of 4.
The top 2 in each group progress automatically to the quarter-finals
They have now decided to stick to the the two-legged format for the quarter- and semi-finals.

Dates

Remember that matches will be played on Tuesdays as well as Wednesdays (we understand that it'll be half and half). The following dates are the Wednesdays.

These dates now appear to have been confirmed (by the AFCi fixture list)

Draw for first round groups: 26 Aug
1st group matches: September 15, 22, 29;
October 20, 27;
November 3
2nd group matches: November 24;
December 8;
March 1, 8, 15, 22
Quarters: April 5, 19
Semis: May 2, 9
Final: May 24

TV coverage

UK

The only way to catch all our games live will be to subscribe to OnDigital
Wednesday matches will either be live on ITV or on OnDigital.
Tuesday matches will be live on OnDigital.
ITV will have highlights of games they don't show live, and a half-hour preview programme probably going out on Monday nights.
For all the above, check listings, or our match previews, nearer the time for details. OnDigital's schedule is here
As we understand things, it is illegal for pubs/clubs to show OnDigital's CL coverage. Please let us know if you find out otherwise.

Other

USA: ESPN2 will have a broadcast each Wednesday so you should get at least highlights. Barca vs Arsenal on 29th September wiull be their main game that night. ESPN Extra (a pay-per-view channel) will also have some Tuesday matches (call your cable people for local details)
Whatever country you're in, if you get Canal+ you'll get some Champions League games. Check local listings.