Five English sides will be involved when the draw for this season’s Champions League group phase is made later today. Premier League champions Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester City had already qualified, while Manchester United’s Europa League final win over Ajax in May sealed their place. Liverpool secured their place by beating Hoffenheim 6-3 on aggregate yesterday. But who could each team play?
Draw Structure
As always, there are 32 teams taking part at this stage of the competition, with the draw splitting them into eight groups of four from four seeded pots. The first pot always contains the reigning champions of the competition plus the title winners from each of the highest-ranked leagues in Europe.
Pots two, three and four are based purely on coefficients calculated using points gathered in European fixtures over the last five seasons, with more recent results carrying more weight.
Pot 1: Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, Benfica, Monaco, Spartak Moscow, Shakhtar Donetsk
Pot 2: Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, PSG, Borussia Dortmund, Sevilla, Manchester City, Porto, Manchester United
Pot 3: Napoli, Tottenham, Basel, Olympiakos, Anderlecht, Liverpool, Roma, Besiktas
Pot 4: Celtic, CSKA Moscow, Sporting Lisbon, APOEL, Feyenoord, Maribor, Qarabag, RB Leipzig
So what are the best and worst possible scenarios for the English sides, given that no two teams from the same league can be drawn into the same group and each group must have a team from all pots?
Chelsea
Best Scenario:Porto, Anderlecht, Qarabag
Worst Scenario: Barcelona, Napoli, RB Leipzig
Manchester City And Manchester United
Best Scenario: Spartak Moscow, Anderlecht, Qarabag
Worst Scenario: Real Madrid, Napoli, RB Leipzig
Tottenham Hotspur And Liverpool
Best Scenario: Spartak Moscow, Porto, Qarabag
Worst Scenario: Real Madrid, PSG, RB Leipzig
Photo Credit: Getty
