Europa League resumes with 2 big British-Italian matchups

NEW YORK — Two matches between teams from Britain and Italy headline the last 32 of the Europa League as the continent’s second-tier competition resumes at the knockout stage tomorrow (Feb 19, morning, Singapore time).

When Celtic and Inter Milan met for the first time, they contested the final of the 1967 European Cup to win the biggest prize in club football.

Forty-eight years on, their standing in Europe isn’t quite the same. Celtic is a serial winner of a weak and largely overlooked Scottish league, while Inter is languishing halfway down the Serie A standings as new coach Roberto Mancini struggles to replicate the success of his first spell in charge.

Indeed, for Inter, winning the Europa League appears the only way the team can get back into the Champions League, which it won only five years ago under Jose Mourinho.

Fiorentina is also part of a strong five-team representation for Italy in the Europa League and Vincenzo Montella’s side face a tough two-legged match against Tottenham, one of the improving teams in England and boasting the country’s most prolific strikers in Harry Kane.

Bidding to win the competition for a fourth time in 10 years, defending champion Sevilla is at home to Borussia Moenchengladbach in the first leg of their last-32 match. Besiktas has a score to settle when it visits Liverpool in another high-profile match.

Here are some things to know ahead of the start of the Europa League’s knockout stage:

NO ALIBIS FOR ROMA

Roma fans probably figured they had witnessed the worst of it during a 7-1 thrashing at home by Bayern Munich in the Champions League in October. Now, five consecutive draws at home in Serie A are testing supporters’ patience.

Rudi Garcia’s men were whistled off the pitch after being held scoreless by last-place Parma on Sunday, leaving Roma seven points behind leader Juventus. Roma was also eliminated from the Italian Cup this month.

“We don’t have alibis, not even all the absences,” said Garcia, referring to some of his key players being injured. “We’ve got to focus on the future now.”

Having dropped out of the Champions League, Roma — Italy’s highest-ranked representative — opens its Europa League campaign against Feyenoord at the Stadio Olimpico. Ticket sales have been slow.

BESIKTAS’ REVENGE

Besiktas hasn’t forgotten the last time the team visited Anfield. It was 2007 and the Turkish side lost 8-0, a result that remains Besiktas’ heaviest European defeat and is the heaviest loss sustained by any club in the Champions League.

“We will knock Liverpool out of the competition,” Besiktas board member Ahmet Nur Cebi said after the last-32 draw. “There is an account which wasn’t settled in England from previous years.”

CONFIDENT CHAMPION

Sevilla is looking to win the competition two years running, like it did in capturing the UEFA Cup — the pre-cursor to the Europa League — in 2006 and 2007.

History is with the holders, who have won their last five European games at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan stadium and are undefeated in nine home games against German clubs in UEFA competitions.

Sevilla is coming off a 3-0 thrashing of local rival Cordoba in the Spanish league. Coach Unai Emery has defender Benoit Tremoulinas and forward Kevin Gameiro back in training.

SMALL TOWN, RISING STARS

Not many people had heard of star striker Didier Drogba when he was with Guingamp, which plays Dynamo Kiev.

Now there is a new star emerging from the little-known club with one of the smallest budgets in French football, and which plays in a northwestern town of just 8,000 inhabitants — compared to Kiev’s population of nearly three million.

Winger Claudio Beauvue has been a revelation this season, scoring 19 goals in all competitions for Guingamp, and Kiev’s defenders will be paying close attention.

Scouts have flocked to the Stade du Roudourou to see the 26-year-old Frenchman play. Much the same happened in 2003, when the 25-year-old Drogba sealed a move to Marseille before going on to become one of Chelsea’s greats. AP