British clubs Celtic and Arsenal will meet each other for a place in the Champions League group stage after being drawn together in the final qualifying round on Friday. Celtic, who edged Dinamo Moscow in the previous round, will host the first leg against the Premier League outfit, who are entering the fray at the final qualifying stage. Atletico Madrid must face Panathinaikos while other ties include Olympique Lyon vs. Anderlecht and Sporting Lisbon vs. Fiorentina. Rank outsiders Sheriff Tiraspol, who stunned Slavia Prague in the previous round, were drawn against group stage regulars Olympiakos in the meeting of the Moldovan and Greek champions. The group stage will also feature a club from either Austria or Israel after Salzburg and Maccabi Haifa, the champions of the respective countries, were drawn together. Latvia or Switzerland will also be represented after FK Ventspils were paired with FC Zurich and one of Bulgaria or Hungary will feature after Levski Sofia were drawn with Debreceni. UEFA have introduced a new system this season in which teams which are champion of their respective nations are kept apart from non-champion teams. The system is designed to give the smaller nations a better chance of being represented in the group stage as they do not have to face non-champion teams from countries such as England, Germany, Spain and Italy in the qualifying rounds. The other draw in the non-Champion group pitted German side VfB Stuttgart with Romanian outfit Timisoara. The first legs will be played on Aug. 18-19 and the returns one week later. Shakhtar opens vs. Sivasspor In Switzerland, UEFA Cup champion Shakhtar Donetsk will play Turkish club Sivasspor to begin its title defense, now called the Europa League. Werder Bremen, last season's runner-up, was paired with Aktobe of Kazakhstan among 38 playoff matches drawn Friday. Zenit St. Petersburg, the 2008 champion, will play Nacional of Portugal, and AS Roma was drawn against Kosice of Slovakia. Also, Hamburg will take on French second-division side Guingamp, and Everton meets Sigma Olomouc of the Czech Republic. Fulham must make a mammoth journey from London to eastern Russia for its second-leg match against Amkar Perm. First-leg matches will be played Aug. 20, with return matches Aug. 27. Wehda edges Hazm Al-Wehda beat Al-Hazm 5-4 in a shootout in Elite Tournament in Abha, Friday. The two teams had played out a dour goalless draw in regulation time. The other match saw Abha beat Al-Ittifaq 4
