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The second round of the first group stage of the Champions League begins. Roman Abramovich's Chelsea will play away against Spanish Betis on Tuesday. Let us remind you that in the first game the British team scored four unanswered goals against the guests on the field of their home Stamford Bridge. In the UEFA Cup, the losers of the first round, Lokomotiv and CSKA, play away. The Railwaymen, who lost at home to Espanyol (0:1), will meet Palermo on the island of Sicily. The army team, who also lost at home to Marseille, will try to rehabilitate themselves in front of their fans in the provincial Dutch city of Heerenveen. St. Petersburg Zenit, which has three points for its victory over the Portuguese Guimarães (2:1), will go to Foggy Albion to fight Bolton.
VOLLEYBALL. November 1-2. Champions League. Men. 3rd round. Women. 2nd round.
On Tuesday, the current trophy holder men's club "Tours" hosts the capital's Dynamo. The Blue and White coach Vladimir Alekno led the Tour to the Belgorod Final Four the year before last, after which he was invited to work with the Moscow team. However, the French club did not lose anything in this regard - this year the Tour, without Alekno, sensationally won the Champions League. Our other representative in the tournament of the strongest teams on the continent, Lokomotiv-Belogorye, is missing this game week.
While there are two dozen teams in the men's Champions League, there are only a dozen in the women's Champions League. Uralochka's upcoming opponent Trofa (Portugal) is the only participant who ended up in the tournament not on a sporting basis. A year ago, the Portuguese representative Madeira lost all six matches in the Top Teams Cup. And in general, the national team of this country has never participated in the final stage of the European Championships. Although the logic of the leaders of the European Volleyball Confederation, who made the decision to include the team from the city of Varzim in the Champions League, can be understood. The backbone of the club consists of girls from Brazil, the strongest country in this sport today. How strong these South American women are will become clear on Wednesday in Yekaterinburg.
TENNIS. October 31 -- November 6. Masters series tournament (men). Paris (France). WTA tournaments (women). Philadelphia (USA), Quebec (Canada) .
Paris is the happiest city in Europe for Russian tennis players. Here, for the first time, a representative of our country won a Grand Slam tournament - this was done by Yevgeny Kafelnikov at the 1996 French Open, here the men's team won the 2002 Davis Cup, and the women's team won the Federation Cup of the outgoing season. This impressive list of victories is complemented by Marat Safin’s three titles at the Paris Masters in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 seasons. Last year, the final turned out to be quite unexpected - Marat was opposed by the Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek. Alas, this time Safin will not be in the French capital - he continues his treatment and does not give up hope of performing at the final Masters Cup tournament in Shanghai. Only one of our compatriots received a place in the main draw. Nikolai Davydenko is seeded third, exempted from participation in the opening round matches, and in the second round he will meet the winner of the qualifying pair Greg Rusedski (Great Britain). Dmitry Tursunov is making his way through qualification for the last Masters of the season. The title of first racket of the competition belongs to the American Andy Roddick, and the Argentinean Guillermo Coria is at the opposite end of the net. Although the clay-loving South American's chances of making it big on the carpet of the magnificent Bercy sports complex look slim.
For girls, after the second category competition with a total bonus of 585 thousand dollars in Philadelphia, many tennis players will go on vacation, and only the eight strongest players in the world will still compete in November at the final WTA Championship. The main favorites for this week's tournament are American Lindsay Davenport and our Maria Sharapova.
LUGE. November 5-6. World Cup. 1st stage. Sigulda (Latvia).
Russian Albert Demchenko will start on a well-known track (the Russian team constantly trains here due to the lack of similar facilities in the country) as a World Cup winner, but not as a favorite. In the off-season, doctors almost turned the athlete into a disabled person when, during an operation to remove appendicitis, they did not promptly remove the tip of his breathing tube from his trachea.
BASKETBALL. October 31 - November 3. Euroleague ULEB (men). 1st round. November 1st. European Cup (men). 2nd round. November 2-3. FIBA Euroleague (women). 2nd round.
The most significant Euroleague tournament on the continent, ULEB, starts on Monday with a Group C match between Ulker (Turkey) and Panathinaikos (Greece). On Wednesday, CSKA, which has been among the participants in the Final Four for three years in a row, hosts the Italian Montepaschi (Siena) in its gym on Leningradsky Prospekt. Despite the fact that compared to last season, CSKA under the leadership of new head coach Ettore Messina no longer looks so powerful, this does not affect the attendance of the red-blue home matches. It will be especially interesting to watch Messina’s duel with his compatriot Carlo Recalcati. By the way, Montepaschi started the national championship very strongly, winning five victories in a row in Serie A1.
In the European Cup, held under the auspices of FIBA, on November 1 in the matches of the second round of the group stage there are: Gmunden (Austria) - Khimki, Barons (Riga, Latvia) - Lokomotiv (Rostov-on-Don ), “Dynamo” (Moscow region) - “Juventud” (Badalona, Spain), “Cholet” (France) - “Dynamo” (St. Petersburg).
In the Women's Euroleague, the meeting between Dynamo Moscow and Lietuvos Telekomas, which will take place on Wednesday in the capital, stands out. Last spring, the Lithuanian club defeated the “blue and white” in Moscow in the first round of the playoffs, knocking the hosts out of further competition for the trophy. However, Dynamo did not draw any conclusions from the failures accumulated in the international and domestic arena. The roster consists of mostly the same players who did not win a single tournament last season.