THE DRAW FOR the group stages of this season’s Champions League takes place at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco today (5pm Irish time) and will be streamed live on Uefa.com.
As per usual, the 32 qualified teams have been split into four seeding pots ahead of the draw. Each group will consist of four teams, and each group will be composed of one team from each pot.
Pot 1 consists of holders Real Madrid and Europa League champions Atlético as well as the champions from the six highest-ranked nations. One of these is Russia, which means Lokomotiv Moscow find themselves among the big boys from Spain, Germany, Italy, England and France.
Pots 2, 3 and 4 are determined by Uefa’s club coefficient rankings.
This season, the clubs’ coefficients are decided by whichever is higher from the following:
- The sum of points won by the individual club over the previous five Champions League/Europa League campaigns.
- The coefficient of the club’s national football association over the previous five Champions League/Europa League campaigns.
Note: ‘Points’, in this context, refers not to group-stage points acquired over the last five years (e.g. 3pts for a win, 1pt for a draw), but to points tallied using the coefficient calculation system (e.g. 2pts for a group-stage win, 4pts for reaching the Round of 16, etc). That calculation system can be found in full here.
With this calculation system in place, Benfica’s victory over PAOK in Wednesday night’s play-off qualifying round sees them nudge last season’s Champions League finalists Liverpool down into Pot 3.
Premier League champions Manchester City are in Pot 1 while Manchester United and Spurs find themselves in Pot 2, but no teams from the same country can be drawn against each other in the group stage.
Here are your pots ahead of this evening’s draw:
Pot 1
- Real Madrid
- Atlético Madrid
- Barcelona
- Bayern Munich
- Manchester City
- Juventus
- Paris Saint-Germain
- Lokomotiv Moscow
Pot 2
- Borussia Dortmund
- Porto
- Manchester United
- Shakhtar Donetsk
- Benfica
- Napoli
- Tottenham Hotspur
- Roma
Pot 3
- Liverpool
- Schalke
- Lyon
- Monaco
- Ajax
- CSKA Moscow
- PSV Eindhoven
- Valencia
Pot 4
- Viktoria Plzeň
- Club Brugge
- Galatasaray
- Young Boys
- Internazionale Milano
- Hoffenheim
- Crvena Zvezda
- AEK Athens
The group stages will kick off in less than three weeks’ time, on the 18 September, and will conclude on the 12 December.
The draw for the Round of 16 will take place on 17 December and the knockout-stage action will begin just under two months later on 12 February.
The final, on 1 June, will be held at Atlético Madrid’s new stadium, the Wanda Metropolitano.
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