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Group A: Auxerre delight at Arsenal draw

There will be a French flavour to AJ Auxerre's meeting with Arsenal FC in the first group stage.

Jean-Claude Hamel, the president of AJ Auxerre, was delighted to have been pitted against Arsenal FC, a meeting that will contain more than a modicum of Gallic flavour, when the draw for the first group stage of the UEFA Champions League was conducted in Monaco today.

Boavista beaten
Auxerre, who qualified for the first group stage last night when they held off the challenge of Portugal's Boavista FC to win 1-0 on aggregate after a 0-0 home draw, will also meet BV Borussia Dortmund, the German champions, and PSV Eindhoven in Group A.

Exciting draw
However, it is the prospect of two encounters with Arsenal, managed by Arsène Wenger and boasting a plethora of French internationals, which most excites Hamel, whose club have made a promising start in the French league, lying in second place. "All games in the Champions League are difficult," he told uefa.com. "We are very happy to be here, after all it is less than 20 hours since we qualified. We have played Arsenal and Dortmund previously but the English side are an exciting draw.

Familiar
"We will come up against half the French team, I am laughing at this because our players are so familiar with each other. Both teams contain players from the national side. Our fans will be happy that we play Arsenal, while we will also be glad to play Dortmund, who beat us in the quarter-finals five years ago."

'Attractive group'
The German champions, who went on to win the tournament that year, beating Juventus FC 3-1 in the final, were equally pleased with this year's draw. The club's commercial manager, Michael Zorc, who sees his club open their campaign with a trip to English champions Arsenal on 17 September, said: "It's a strong and attractive group which promises much. The clubs are also ones that our fans can realistically reach. Our goal is passage to the second round, we simply have to do that."

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