UEFA forced to redo Champions League draw after Man Utd incorrectly faced against PSG

Nicholas Hughes

• 13 Dec 2021 06:55 CST
• 4 min read

UEFA were forced to re-draw their fixtures for this season's Champions League Last 16, when Manchester United were incorrectly excluded from the process.

In the first draw, the Old Trafford side were paired with Paris Saint-German, but closer inspection afterwards revealed that Man Utd had been accidentally excluded when Atletico Madrid were awaiting their potential opponents for the knock-out round.

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As such, shortly after the announced fixtures, UEFA released a statement confirming that the entire process would have to be re-done and that the fixtures announced on Monday morning were now declared void.

“Following technical problem with software of external service provider that instructs officials as to which teams eligible to play each other, material error occurred in the draw for the Champions League last 16," read a statement from the European governing body.

So, what happened in the first draw?

As the world waited to find out the ties for the Round of 16 stage of the competition, Champions League final ambassador Andrey Arshavin drew Man Utd to face Villarreal.

But given those two clubs had both come from Group F, they were ineligible to face each other in the first knockout round of the competition and United should not have been placed in the pot.

They quickly rectified the initial issue by taking another ball from the pot, which drew United’s neighbours Manchester City against the Spanish side instead.

But the blunder did not finish there, as it appeared Man Utd had already been slipped into the autocue from which Giorgio Marchetti was reading to facilitate the draw.

It definitely looks like #mufc’s ball - in the second pot from the right, back row - was not included in the Atletico Madrid draw. pic.twitter.com/ubxQHdjkQV

— Mark Critchley (@mjcritchley) December 13, 2021

When Atletico Madrid were the next unseeded team to be drawn, Marchetti incorrectly declared that Manchester United would not be a potential opponent to Diego Simeone’s side because they had already been drawn.

While technically their ball was taken out of the pot, it was done so incorrectly and so they should have been placed back in the draw as one of the teams eligible to face Atleti.

But as a result of Marchetti’s statement, his UEFA colleague Michael Heselschwerdt did not place United’s ball in the pot for seeded teams to be drawn against the reigning Spanish champions.

As it happened, the error from UEFA meant that they were not included, and the Red Devils were ultimately drawn against PSG in the last tie to be sorted in the draw.

The tie would have seen Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi lock horns again for the second straight year in the Champions League, while Mauricio Pochettino would have been faced with a tricky head-to-head with Ralf Rangnick on the sideline.