Porto 0-0 Arsenal

In a truly uninspired game, Arsenal stumbled their way through to the last 16 in the Champions League. Most of the action took place in Arsenal's half, but the best Porto could come up with were a couple of alarmingly close shots Ricardo Quaresma banged off the post. Both teams went in knowing they only needed a draw to advance, but it really looked like Porto was going to come up with a winner. In the end it didn't matter, because Hamburger picked up their first points in six games against CSKA Moscow in the other game, meaning CSKA couldn't overtake Arsenal or Porto no matter what the result of this game.

Tragically, Anderlecht are going home for the year, along with the other last placed teams from each group. Third place teams continue on in the UEFA Cup, which is kind of the NIT of Europe, and I was suprised to see former European champions Steaua Bucharest in that group, because the Romanian league really dropped off a bit in quality after the Iron Curtain lifted and all their players headed for Spain and Turkey. Players were being paid in firewood not that long ago in Romania, and the national team has dropped a tier in Europe as well since the days of Gheorghe Hagi and that wife-beating striker girls inexplicably continued to go crazy over.

So here are the last 16 in Europe (draw takes place next Friday):
Chelsea
Barcelona
Bayern Munich
Internazionale
Liverpool
PSV Eindhoven
Valencia
Roma
Lyon
Real Madrid
Manchester United
Celtic
Arsenal
FC Porto
Milan
Lille

And can I just say I'm definitely looking forward to next week when Ajax try to get something going in their UEFA Cup run by heading to Belgium to take on Zulte Waregem. The new crop of stars coming up through the youth system and their African development all seem to have moved on (Ibrahimovic, Van der Vaart) or imploded (Mido), and now they're scraping their way to a third place tie with Sparta Prague, trailing Zulte and Espanyol, ahead of only the mighty Austria Wien. I really wish they'd gotten the Atlantic league off the ground with the Belgians, Scots, and Portuguese, and some kind of bigger stage at least on a par with the French league for these guys.