Last night, I predicted that Spartak Moscow, Braga, Basle and FC Twente would be the four 3rd Champions League teams who would be seeded in the Europa League Draw.
I was correct with three out of the four, but a great start by former Ger Frank de Boer’s Ajax, who won 2-0 in Milan, means that they will be seeded at the expense of Basle who lost 3-0 to Bayern Munich.
Rangers finished 7th best out of the 8 third ranking teams who qualify and as expected will not be seeded, along with Rubin Kazan, Basle and Benfica.
Subsequently, we now know for certain 11 out of the 16 seeded teams that we could face:
Bayer Leverkusen, Sporting Lisbon, CSKA Moscow, Zenit St Petersburg, vfb Stuttgart, Liverpool, Porto, Spartak Moscow, Braga, Ajax and FC Twente.
The other 5 seeds will be identified after Thursday nights final Europa League games, but are likely to be:
Manchester City (or Lech Poznan), Villareal, Dynamo Kiev, PSV Eindhoven and Paris St Germain.
With teams from the same Association prevented from playing each other at this stage, a trip to Russia, Portugal or Holland is looking most likely.