The Champions League draw takes place late on Thursday afternoon with Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United set to learn their fate
The league phase draw for the Champions League takes place at 5pm on Thursday as Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United all wait to learn their fate.
Taking place in Monaco, the draw will include the 29 teams who secured automatic qualification for the competition’s league phase, along with seven teams who triumphed in their play-offs on Tuesday and Wednesday – AEK Athens, LASK, Viking, Slovan Bratislava, Sabah, Fenerbahce and Bodo/Glimt.
The draw will put each of the 36 competitors against eight different teams during this stage of the competition from the four pots which are decided using the five-year UEFA club coefficient ranking.
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Each of the 36 teams has a physical ball allocated, but when a team is drawn, a computer will assign them opponents for their eight matches. The result will be shown on screen, so those tuning in at home and those present in Monaco can see it.
The software will also determine which team will enjoy home advantage for the matches in question.
Fixtures will also be impacted by a rule introduced by UEFA following the transition to the league phase from the old group stage which stipulates that the exact same fixture can’t be played three years consecutively with the same team hosting.
This affects two Premier League clubs, with Inter Milan vs Arsenal and Liverpool vs Real Madrid both prohibited from happening for a third successive year.
However, Arsenal are still allowed to host Inter, and Liverpool are permitted to travel to the Bernabeu.
National regulations also come into play meaning teams cannot compete against another side from the same country during the league phase, and they can only face a maximum of two teams from one country. The software utilised in the draw ensures all these rules are automatically adhered to, preventing any deadlock situation.
The five Premier League teams involved can’t play each other until later stages of the competition. There hasn’t been an all-English match-up in the Champions League since the 2021 final, when Chelsea triumphed over Manchester City.
Phase matches are set to kick off on September 8, with the first round of games spread over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of that week. Six rounds of fixtures will occur before the year’s end, with the final two gameweeks in January.
The last of these, on January 27, features 18 matches happening simultaneously as the final qualifiers for the knockout stages are decided.