Fun at the draw

Just had a call from a very angry Titi Giaux. Some players of Rochefort TS and JSC Rochefort were not allowed to go to the draw because they are under 18 years old and the draw takes place in a casino. Even the son of Titi was not allowed to accompany his father. Real a bad start of a tournament after the players went of the hall of the tournament to practice and they were not allowed to play.

One of our players wasn't allowed in as well, because he didn't bring his passport and does not have a driving licence. It would have been great for someone to warn us ahead of time. The casino did have conference rooms outside the gambling area where all players would have been allowed.

The other interesting thing about the draw was how clubs from the same country were separated. Typically you do it purely random and if too many clubs from the same country end up in the same group, you simply move them to the next group. That's also what was done at the World Cup in Palermo. But not this time. Stefano De Francesco announced that two Italian teams were going in group 1 and three were going in group 2. The same happened with Belgian and Austrian teams. Because of how it was done, we (Royal) could have never been drawn in a group with Wiener Neustadt, even though there is no real reason why this cannot happen. I have no idea whether this is discussed in the Handbook, but if it's not it must be added. A lot of combinations of groups got eliminated simply because of how the extra team got assigned.

Just another mistake...