Monaco – The heavyweights of European football and the newcomers will discover their opponents of the Champions League this Thursday when the initial league phase is drawn in Monaco.
The teams will meet in a concert hall next to the beach for the draw ceremony that will begin at six in the afternoon local time (1600 GMT).
Among them are defending champion Paris Saint-Germain and the rookie Pafos de Chipre. There will also be Real Madrid with its 15 European titles and the debutant Kaira Almity of Kazakhstan, as well as the English champion Liverpool and the Bodo/Glimt of Norway, from within the Arctic Circle.
The matches in January in Almath and Bodo are emerging as some of the coldest in the history of the competition and the longest trips in history for visiting teams.
The former champions who failed to qualify for this edition include AC Milan and Manchester United.
This is the second season of the league phase format with 36 teams playing against eight different rivals and classified in a unique position table.
The weighted calendar gives each team two opponents extracted from each of the four planting bombs. The equipment is sown according to their classification for five seasons of results in UEFA competitions.
The matches begin on September 16 and the last day of the League phase is January 28.
The eight best teams in the final classification advance to the round of 16 in March. The winners of eight Playoffs qualifiers will join them, with classified teams from the ninth to the twenty -room, scheduled for February. The 12 lower teams are eliminated.
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Sowing of the raffle:
Bombo 1: Paris Saint-Germain (France), Real Madrid (Spain), Manchester City (England), Bayern Munich (Germany), Liverpool (England), Inter Milan (Italy), Chelsea (England), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Barcelona (Spain).
Bombo 2: Arsenal (England), Bayer Leverkusen (Germany), Atlético de Madrid (Spain), Benfica (Portugal), Atalanta (Italy), Villarreal (Spain), Juventus (Italy), Eintracht Frankfurt (Germany), Club Brugge (Belgium).
Bombo 3: Tottenham (England), PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands), Ajax (Netherlands), Napoli (Italy), Sporting de Lisbon (Portugal), Olympiakos (Greece), Slavia Prague (Czech Republic), Bodo/Glyimt (Norway), Marseille (France).
Bombo 4: Copenhagen (Denmark), Monaco (France), Galatasaray (Turkey), Union Saint-Gilloise (Belgium), Qarabag (Azerbaijan), Athletic Bilbao (Spain), Newcastle (England), Pafos (Cyprus), Kaira Almity (Kazakhstone).
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