With the curtain now having fallen on the season following Real Madrid’s third successive Champions League win, clubs can begin thinking about who they will play in next season’s competition. Unlike previous years, all qualified clubs from the big four leagues – Premier League, Serie A, La Liga and Bundesliga – will go straight into the group stage, avoiding the play-offs entirely. That means, even though Liverpool failed to win the Champions League and only finished fourth in the Premier League, they will still go straight into the group stages.
In total, 26 teams automatically qualify for the group stages – all of whom are now confirmed – and the pots are starting to take shape…
The champions’ pot (Pot 1) is now complete, with Madrid rivals Real and Atletico both seeded highest thanks to winning the Champions League and Europa League respectively. Russian champions Lokomotiv Moscow – who many teams seeded in Pot 2 and below will be desperate to draw – are the third worst team in the competition according to their coefficient. The six teams with an asterisks next to their name – Benfica, Basel, Salzburg, Ludogorets, PSV and Celtic – still need to come through the qualifying rounds, though are seeded, and their results could still alter the makeup of each pot.
Liverpool’s defeat in the final of the Champions League means Tottenham are guaranteed a spot in Pot 2 of the Champions League draw. Had the Reds beaten Real, however, they would have leapfrogged Spurs into Pot 1 and shunted them down the seeding order. Instead, they will be in Pot 3 unless both Benfica and Basel fail to progress from the qualifying round, which is fairly unlikely; if only one team loses, then Roma will jump up thanks to their superior coefficient over Liverpool. That means Jurgen Klopp’s side could face a potential group of death, for example: Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Liverpool and Inter Milan.
LEAGUE DRAW? Incredibly, the preliminary round draw for the Champions League – which features teams from Andorra, San Marino, Gibraltar and Kosovo – takes place before the World Cup has even started, with matches scheduled in the middle of the tournament. The first qualifying round, which will involve Celtic, also overlaps with the World Cup, though the play-off proper is not until the end of
August No Premier League clubs will have to worry about that, though, with all four sides going straight in the group stages. The draw for the group stage will take place on Thursday August 30th in Monaco, not the usual location of Nyon, with the first matches played in the middle of September.
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