Racing Genk Vs. Valencia, 2011 UEFA Champions League: Visitors Frustrated In 0-0 Draw

Sometimes, it's just not your day. So it was with Valencia, who managed to drop points to the supposed minnows of Group E in the opening game of their 2011 UEFA Champions League campaign. Racing Genk away looked like an easy start for the winners of last year's annual competition to find the best Spanish team that isn't Real Madrid or Barcelona, and in truth it should have been - Valencia swamped their opponents in terms of possession and out-shot them 22-7. However, you can score if you can't shoot straight, and the visitors mustered just four of those 22 shots on frame, barely threatening László Köteles' goal, and that's the sort of thing that leads to a 0-0 draw.

The closest Valencia came to scoring was from a second-half corner kick, when defencer Adil Rami rattled the bar with Köteles beaten, but other than that Genk defended deeply and proved very difficult to break down, with Valencia too often forced into taking low-percentage potshots from range. Anyway, the Spaniards are left to rue both their profligacy and their relative inability to break down a stubborn defence - the draw may prove very costly in the grand scheme of the group, where it looks like second place will be a battle between Valencia and Bayer Leverkusen (who lost at Chelsea).