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![\"Roma's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/69a1956084dfb4ee61ec7867jpeg.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRoma’s Evan Ndicka and Roma’s Gianluca Mancini celebrates after scoring during the Serie A soccer match between Roma and Cremonese in Rome, Italy, Sunday Feb. 22, 2026. (Alfredo Falcone\/LaPresse via AP)<\/p>\n
Italian soccer had Inter Milan and Juventus exit the Champions League this week against lower-ranked opponents, leaving only Atalanta representing Serie A in the round of 16 which has six English clubs.<\/p>\n
Atalanta was drawn Friday against Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n
Roma coach Gian Piero Gasperini won the Europa League two years ago with Atalanta.<\/p>\n
The new Europa League format launched last season \u2014 with 36 teams in a single-standings league format, then a tennis-style knockout bracket \u2014 now lets teams from the same country meet at any point in the knockout phase.<\/p>\n
Previously, national derbies were possible only from the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
The upper half of the Europa League bracket includes both Spanish clubs. Celta Vigo hosts the first leg against Lyon, and Real Betis travels first to face Panathinaikos.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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The winner of Celta vs. Lyon will advance to a quarterfinal against Genk or Freiburg.<\/p>\n
Ferencvaros or Braga awaits the winner of the Panathinaikos-Betis games.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s draw set the Europa League bracket through to the May 20 final at the home stadium of Besiktas in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NYON, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 An Italian derby between Roma and Bologna was drawn Friday in the Europa League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-503269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}