“It is an unfortunate situation for which we apologize to all the supporters and to the clubs”, declared Monday, December 13 on franceinfo Giorgio Marchetti, UEFA deputy secretary general, club competition manager, after the technical incident which disrupted the draw for the knockout stages of the Champions League, forcing the body to carry out a new draw. “Our external supplier is investigating to understand the origin of the problem “, he added. “Sometimes the technology is flawed and we have it demonstrated”, ends Giorgio Marchetti.
franceinfo: What exactly happened?
Giorgio Marchetti: I would say this is a really unfortunate situation for which we apologize to all the supporters and to the clubs. Normally we are helped by software to handle the complexity of the draw, as there are many conditions, especially that clubs that have played in the same group cannot meet and clubs from the same country cannot. can not meet. You have to deal with this complexity and so this software is helping us and helping us over the past two years. This is the first time that we have encountered this problem. The system gave us indications which were not correct. Of course, our external supplier is investigating to understand the root of the problem. But what is certain is that the printout was skewed by this problem.
To avoid this kind of error in the future, isn’t returning to a full draw from the round of 16 the solution?
The draw is done in the format of the competition and we have these rules, with the impossibility of meeting between two clubs from the same group and from the same country. These are rules that are shared and that we have discussed with stakeholders, especially with clubs that agree. It sounds ideal like that. The full draw, in principle, is not possible because it is always necessary to avoid that there are meetings between clubs from different countries and from different groups.
So there is no question of going back on this regulation to simplify and avoid this kind of error in the future?
This kind of mistake should be avoided. We always trust technology. Sometimes the technology is a little flawed. Today we have the demonstration.