AND IT’S BACK.
Uefa and their attendant suits gather in Istanbul today to make the draw for this season’s Champions League group stage, getting underway at 5pm Irish time.
The venue is Istanbul as that’s where the final will (finally) be held. Istanbul was supposed to host the final in 2020 and again in 2021, but on each occasion Uefa moved the game to Portugal due to the pandemic.
The Ataturk Stadium is once again the venue for the final, for the first time since 2005, when Liverpool completed their own miracle and Djimi Traore walked away with the medal that has evaded, among others, Diego Maradona, Sergio Aguero, Eric Cantona, Lothar Matthaus, Gianluigi Buffon, and Ronaldo Nazario.
Liverpool may face complications in returning to Istanbul – and to a fourth final in six years – from the off, as they are in pot two of today’s draw. The draw is as it has been for years: eight groups will consist of a team drawn from each of the four seeded pots. Sides from the same country cannot be drawn against eachother, and the top two will progress to the knockout stages. The third-placed sides will drop into the Europa League, with the bottom side eliminated from Europe entirely.
Pot One is restricted to the Champions League and Europa League title holders, and the champions of the top six associations based on their coefficients. It means Liverpool may face an immediate rematch with Real Madrid, with Chelsea and Tottenham also in the same pot.
Manchester City are in pot number one and can’t be drawn against their English rivals, which will leave Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel, and Antonio Conte hoping to avoid Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, and Bayern Munich. AC Milan were bottom seeds last season but are in the top rank this time as Italian champions, with Ajax and Porto also among the top seeds. Eintracht Frankfurt are there too, as Europa League holders.
Celtic and Rangers are in pot four, meaning daunting draws are in store for both.
Russian clubs have been excluded from this year’s Champions League, though Ukraine does have a representative in Shakhtar Donetsk, who will play their home games in Poland.
The plonking of the Qatar World Cup into the season’s mid-point means the games are quashed into a tighter schedule than ever before, and the group stage will be finished on 2 November, five weeks earlier than usual.
Below are the teams involved in today’s draw.
Pot One
Real Madrid, Eintracht Frankfurt, Manchester City, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Porto, Ajax
Pot Two
Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, RB Leipzig, Tottenham Hotspur
Pot Three
Borussia Dortmund, Red Bull Salzburg, Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan, Napoli, Sporting Lisbon, Bayer Leverkusen, Benfica
Pot Four
Club Brugge, Celtic, Maccabi Haifa, Viktoria Plzen, Marseille, Rangers, FC Copenhagen, Dinamo Zagreb
