The UEFA Champions League is back. After Manchester City’s first title in the competition, the biggest club tournament reopens a new edition with the end of this week’s qualifications, and the draw for the group stage, which will be this Thursday, August 31.
The raffle drums
Present in pot 2, Real Madrid is the opponent that many teams, like defending champions Manchester City, will want to avoid in the Champions League group stage draw. Even so, none of the drums has ‘easy prey’.
(Colombian team: who would be in the first call for the tie?).
Kick drum 1: Barcelona (Spain), Seville (Spain), Manchester City (England), Naples (Italy), Bayern (Germany), Benfica (Portugal) and Feyenoord (Netherlands).
Kick drum 2: Real Madrid (Spain), Atlético de Madrid (Spain), Manchester United (England), Inter Milan (Italy), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), RB Leipzig (Germany), Porto (Portugal) and Arsenal (England).
Drum 3: Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine), Red Bull Salzburg (Austria), Milan (Italy), Braga (Portugal), Lazio (Italy), Red Star (Serbia), Copenhagen (Denmark) and PSV (Netherlands)
Kick drum 4: Real Sociedad (Spain), Galatasaray (Turkey), Antwerp (Belgium), Young Boys (Switzerland), Celtic (Scotland), Newcastle (England), Union Berlin (Germany) and Lens (France).
This is how the four Champions League drums have been before tomorrow’s draw. PSG will be in pot 1 and Lens in 4. There will only be two French teams in the top continental competition. pic.twitter.com/P0hWd5uild
– Andrés Onrubia Ramos (@AndiOnrubia) August 30, 2023
Time and where to see the draw
Starting at 11 am, with ESPN television broadcast, the draw for the 2023/2024 Champions League group stage will begin. The format is the usual, four drums with eight teams each. Of course, the main determining factor is that two teams from the same country will not be able to coincide in the same group.
PSG vs. reunion? Real Madrid?
it’s possible the presence in the same group of Paris SG and Real Madridan increasingly repeated confrontation in the Champions League and that could be a nod to the soap opera between the two clubs due to the signing of Kylian Mbappé, regularly linked to Real Madrid in recent years.
The French attacker, separated during the summer and reintegrated into the first team, has returned in style to Paris SG, with a double last weekend in Ligue 1 against Lens (3-1), the other French representative in the Champions League, in pot 4. The Parisians, finalists in 2020, no longer have Lionel Messi or Neymar, but they hope to shine with Mbappé and new signings such as Ousmane Dembélé and Marco Asensio.
(Luis Rubiales’ mother is urgently hospitalized: this is all that is known).
Bayern MunichFor his part, he has signed the English center forward Harry Kane for 100 million euros (about 110 million dollars). The best scorer of the English team (58 goals) hopes to finally win a title after years of drought at Tottenham. Kane has landed on the right foot in Germany and has already scored three goals. The Bavarian club could face Inter again in the group stage, as happened last year.
in naplesVictor Osimhen is also in form, with three goals in two games in Serie A, and the Italian team, who reached the quarterfinals in the last edition, will seek to continue progressing.
Winner of the Europa League for the seventh time at the end of May, the Seville He hopes to rediscover his best version in Europe after a catastrophic start to the season. The Andalusians have lost their first three games in the Spanish championship and are last. In the rest of the drums, the teams to follow will be AC Milan, seven times champion of the tournament, and Lazio (pot 3), and Newcastle (pot 4), bought by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in 2021 and back in the League. champions for the first time since 2002-2003, in the Alan Shearer years. The main condition of the draw is that no two teams from the same country will be able to coincide in the same group.
Manchester City, the current champion
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*With AFP
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