The draw will take place in Istanbul, Turkey on Thursday at 4 p.m. GMT, noon ET when the 32 teams will be divided into eight groups of four
The draw will take place in Istanbul, Turkey on Thursday at 4 p.m. GMT, noon ET when the 32 teams will be divided into eight groups of four
There will be no new names in the 32-team lineup in the Champions League draw after the last confirmed entry was ended by an unexpected run by the Norwegian team.
Bodo/Glimt, who had spent much of the past two decades in the Norwegian second division, were hoping to cap their recent growth by joining Europe’s elite competition, but lost in extra time to Dinamo Zagreb in the playoffs on Wednesday .
Dinamo joined Rangers and Copenhagen to complete a group-stage lineup with 14 former champions advancing through their playoffs, having won 56 of the 67 European Cup or Champions League titles. Seven more teams are the last beaten finalists.
The elite group includes defending champions Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, who are still fighting in the European Court of Justice for the right to compete with Champions League organizer UEFA. its own competition,
The Champions League generally features at least one new face – the sheriff of Moldova last year, Atalanta of Italy in 2019 – and there were four debutants two years ago.
Rangers return to Champions League after 12 years but no new names
There are no such upstarts this season, although some in Scotland would argue that Rangers should be counted as first-timers. A crippling financial crisis 10 years ago led to the liquidation and relaunch of the storied club in the fourth tier of Scottish football.
Rangers are now back in the Champions League after a 12-year absence, joining Glasgow rivals Celtic in the group stage.
Shakhtar Donetsk will be in a draw, two days after playing his first competitive game since Russia invaded his country in February – the opening day of an unlikely new home season in Ukraine.
Shakhtar’s entry was eventually gifted by UEFA’s ban on all-Russian teams from Zenit St Petersburg, but the Ukrainian club no longer has a core of Brazilian players and will play its home games in Warsaw in neighboring Poland for security reasons.
“It will be difficult to be on par with (Manchester) City, or Bayern or Liverpool. Maybe we’ll be lucky,” Shakhtar’s captain Taras Stepanenko said this week.
Shakhtar hosted eventual winners Madrid in Kyiv last October, and the record 14-time European champions are playing a record-extending 26th consecutive season in the group stage. Madrid has progressed every time.
Take a look at the Champions League ahead of the group-stage draw starting at 1600 GMT in Istanbul, Turkey.
UCL Draw Format
32 teams from 15 different countries go into groups of four playing round-robin games at home and away. Teams from the same country cannot be in the same group. The top two in each group advance to the next year’s knockout stage.
The top seeds are the winners of last season’s Champions League and Europa League, Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt, as well as the six winners of the highest-ranked domestic leagues.
The other 24 teams are seeded according to the UEFA rankings based on European results over the past five seasons. Liverpool is ranked 24th and Maccabi Haifa is the lowest.
Champions League group stage matches start early due to FIFA World Cup 2022
As the World Cup in Qatar begins on 20 November, these Champions League groups begin on 6 September and end on 2 November, five weeks earlier than usual.
Six rounds will be played in just nine weeks before a three-month pause until the Round of 16, starting February 14. That draw is on November 7.
Stability crowds because of the first World Cup played outside the European summer means the Champions League final at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul is on 10 June.
It is the latest scheduled final since the inaugural European Cup final on June 13, 1956 – not including August’s title game in the pandemic-hit 2019-20 season.
Champions League moves further west
The Champions League is even more concentrated in Western Europe – and not just because of Russia’s ban. In South-Eastern Europe all teams from Greece and Turkey lost in the qualifying rounds.
Only Shekhar, Viktoria Plzen and Dinamo Zagreb qualified from Old Eastern Europe, with Maccabi Haifa in Israel facing a 2,000-kilometre (1,250 mi) flight to their nearest potential rival, Napoli.
Recently Champions League teams Dynamo Kyiv, Red Star Belgrade, Sheriff, Ferencváros and Karabag all lost in the qualifying rounds.
This means hundreds of millions of prize money flows to clubs in the already prosperous leagues of Western Europe.
UCL Prize Money
The 32 teams account for approximately 2 billion euros ($1.99 billion) in UEFA prize money.
Each team receives 15.6 million euros ($15.5 million), plus 2.8 million euros ($2.78 million) per win and a base fee of 930,000 euros ($924,000) for each draw in the group stage. An additional 930,000 euros ($924,000) from each draw game is pooled and shared among the teams that win the game. The payout increases through each knockout round.
A fund of 600 million euros ($596 million) is split between clubs according to their place in the league table, based on historical European titles and results over the past 10 years.
The top-ranked “coefficient” team, Real Madrid, received 36.4 million euros ($36.1 million) and the lowest ranked Maccabi Haifa only 1.14 million euros ($1.13 million). Teams also receive part of their domestic broadcast rights deal.
UEFA forks some cash to help repay broadcasters for games they lose in the 2019-20 edition.
All this adds up to the eventual champions receiving around 125 million euros ($124 million) in UEFA prize money.
UCL Draw: When, How and Where to Watch in India
The UEFA Champions League group stage draw will take place on Thursday 25 August in Istanbul, Turkey.
This means that Indian football fans can watch the draw live from 9:30 PM IST.
The UEFA Champions League group stage draw will be broadcast on Sony Ten 2 and Sony Ten 2 HD channels. It can also be streamed on the Sony LIV app and website.
UCL Seeding
Pot 1: Real Madrid (Spain), Eintracht Frankfurt (Germany), Manchester City (England), AC Milan (Italy), Bayern Munich (Germany), Paris Saint-Germain (France), Porto (Portugal), Ajax (Netherlands).
Pot 2: Liverpool (England), Chelsea (England), Barcelona (Spain), Juventus (Italy), Atletico Madrid (Spain), Sevilla (Spain), Leipzig (Germany), Tottenham (England).
Pot 3: Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Salzburg (Austria), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine), Inter Milan (Italy), Napoli (Italy), Benfica (Portugal), Sporting Lisbon (Portugal), Bayer Leverkusen (Germany) Pot 4: Rangers (Scotland) ) ), Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia), Marseille (France), Copenhagen (Denmark), Club Brugge (Belgium), Celtic (Scotland), Viktoria Plzen (Czech Republic), Maccabi Haifa (Israel).
AP. with input from,