Last season's quarterfinalist Fenerbahce was drawn Tuesday to begin its 2008-09 Champions League campaign against Hungarian champion MTK. The Turkish club hopes to have Spain's European Championship-winning coach Luis Aragones in charge when the teams meet in the Champions League second qualifying round in four weeks. Scottish side Rangers, which reached the UEFA Cup final in May, will begin against the winner between Lithuanian champion Kaunas and Santa Coloma from Andorra, which meet in the first qualifying round later this month. A total of 42 clubs from across Europe were included in the draw for the first two qualifying rounds of the continent's most prestigious club competition. The first round features champion clubs from Europe's smallest national leagues, with the first leg held July 15-16 and the return matches scheduled for July 22-23. The winners will face teams from countries with a higher UEFA ranking in the second qualifying round starting a week later. Fenerbahce was one of the most glamorous names in Friday's draw after finishing second in the Turkish league last season and reaching the last eight of the Champions League for the first time. It lost 3-2 on aggregate against eventual runner-up Chelsea, and said last week it had reached an agreement with Aragones, after former Brazil international Zico left the club last month. Fenerbahce will play the first leg at home against MTK on July 29 or 30 before traveling to Budapest for the return. The Hungarians were entered direct into the second round. The first round includes a meeting between Dinamo Tbilisi of Georgia and NSI Runavik of the Faeroe Islands, meaning the clubs will have to travel more than 4,000 kilometers between the former Soviet Union republic on the east shores of the Black Sea and the tiny isles situated between Iceland and Norway. The winner will earn the right to travel to Greece in the second qualifying round to face Panathinaikos, a European Cup finalist in 1971. A third qualifying round is played in August when clubs who finished third and fourth last season in Europe's biggest leagues will join the competition. Among those entrants are past champion Barcelona, Juventus and Liverpool, and 2006 runner-up Arsenal. Defending champion Manchester United goes directly to the lucrative 32-team group phase which begins play in September. The final will be staged at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome on May 27, 2009. UEFA Cup draw Manchester City will travel to the Faeroe Islands in the first qualifying round of the UEFA Cup, while Bundesliga club Hertha Berlin was drawn against Moldavia's Nistru Otaci on Tuesday. City, which has spent the summer pursuing FC Barcelona's Ronaldinho, visits Streymur on the remote province of Denmark for the first-leg match on July 17. The return leg is on July 31, at Championship club Barnsley's stadium. The City of Manchester Stadium - which could fit the entire Faeroe population of around 48,000 people - is unavailable because the turf is being relaid after hosting a rock concert by Bon Jovi. Manchester City only finished ninth in the Premier League but its good disciplinary record earned it an extra place in the tournament awarded to England through the UEFA Fair Play league. Hertha Berlin also entered the competition through a Fair Play award after finishing 10th in the Bundesliga. A total of 74 clubs will take part in the first qualifying round, with another 27 joining at the second stage in August. A further 32 clubs from the bigger European nations are automatically entered into the first knockout round in September. The 16 losing teams in the Champions League's third qualifying round also join then. A group stage featuring 40 clubs is played before a final knockout phase is reached in February. That also features teams who placed third in the Champions League group phase. The 2009 UEFA Cup final will be played at the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 20.
