Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham in Champions League draw: Who could English sides face?
Four English teams will be in the draw for the Champions League group stages. Who could they face and when is it held?
The annual draw for the group stages, which can play a major part in a club’s fortunes in Europe, will take place this week after the last remaining play-off round ties are decided on Wednesday.
Already, 29 of the 32 teams in the group stages have been confirmed, with three more teams due to progress to join them through qualifying, potentially including 2018/19 semi-finalists Ajax.
So what can the four English teams, Manchester City, holders Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham expect?
When’s the draw and how can I follow it?
This season’s group-stage draw will be held in its usual location of the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on Thursday at 5pm BST.
There will be live coverage of the draw on Sky Sports News with a special hour-long programme, including former players from all four of the English clubs in the group stages.
We will also be live-blogging the draw, bringing you all the news as it happens on skysports.com and our app.
There are four teams in each group, one from each ‘pot’, which theoretically stops the strongest teams from knocking one another out too early.
The top pot, Pot 1, includes last season’s Champions League winners Liverpool and Europa League winners Chelsea, as well as Manchester City and the rest of the domestic champions from the top-six performing leagues across Europe.
The rest of the pots, 2-4, are decided in rank order of the remaining 24 clubs’ European co-efficient – which is a calculation of their performance in the Champions League and Europa League over the last five years.
No two teams from the same association can be drawn together at this stage – so there will be no English derbies just yet.
Who’s in which pot?
All of the clubs in Pot 1 have already been decided. The six league champions – Man City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Zenit St Petersburg, and Paris Saint-Germain – will all be seeded top of their respective groups, along with Liverpool and Chelsea.
Certain other clubs also know what pot they will be in already, but with three teams yet to be confirmed, some qualified sides’ fate is still to be decided, depending on who makes it through.
Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Tottenham will definitely be in Pot 2; Antonio Conte’s Inter Milan will be in Pot 3 and could be drawn against his former club Chelsea; while teams with limited recent success in European competitions, like Galatasaray, Atalanta and Lille, will be in the final pot, Pot 4.
Pot 1: Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Zenit St Petersburg, Paris Saint-Germain.
Pot 2: Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli, Shakhtar, Tottenham, Benfica.
Pot 2 or 3: Lyon.
Pot 3: Bayer Leverkusen, RB Salzburg, Valencia, Inter, Dinamo Zagreb, Olympiakos.
Pot 3 or 4: Lokomotiv Moskow, Genk.
Pot 4: Galatasaray, RB Leipzig, Atalanta, Lille, Red Star Belgrade.
Who else could join them?
There are three teams yet to qualify – so some of the pot placements depend on what happens on Wednesday night.
Here are the three remaining ties – home teams listed first – and how the two-legged play-offs are balanced so far:
Ajax vs APOEL (0-0 on aggregate)
Slavia Prague vs Cluj (Slavia lead 1-0 on aggregate)
Club Brugge vs LASK (Brugge lead 1-0 on aggregate)
Of the six clubs in action, Ajax are the only ones who would get into Pot 2 if they make it through. The rest will all drop into Pot 3 or Pot 4.
When does the football start?
The group stages get underway in the week of September 16, with six group games running through to mid-December.
Whoever is lucky enough to go all the way will go head to head at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul – where Liverpool beat AC Milan back in 2005 – on May 30.
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