Europe’s leading clubs head to Monaco’s Grimaldi Forum this week for the Champions League league phase draw on Thursday August 28 and the Europa and Conference League draws the following day.
It is the second year of UEFA’s reformatted club competition eco-system, and the Champions League will again see the 36 teams split into four pots based on their individual coefficient ranking. Each club will learn their eight different opponents.
Champions League titleholder PSG will be the top seed in pot 1. The draw begins with pot 1, and will see one physical ball drawn before the automated software draws the eight opponents for that team.
The software will match two teams from each of the four pots, with one home and one away match.
Draw rules mean that no teams from the same association will face each other, while teams can be drawn against no more than two opponents from the same association.
The same procedure will be repeated for all teams until all pairings have been drawn.
The Premier League has the highest representation in the draw with six teams – the top five teams in the league (Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Newcastle and Aston Villa (plus Tottenham Hotspur, who beat Manchester United 1-0 in the Europa League final).
The Europa League and UEFA Conference League draws will take place together the following day (Friday August 31), as part of the same live broadcast.
The two competitions will be drawn separately but all pairings will be made instantly rather drawing opponents to all teams one after the other, as in the Champions League draw.
The draw software is provided by AE Live who debuted the system for the club competitions last year.
“Since their appointment in September 2023 as a partner for all UEFA draws, they have developed and tested the software and integrated with various internal and external mechanisms to check and verify the results with more than 1,000,000 simulations across various configurations per competition and it was used successfully during last season’s draws,” said UEFA.
Independent auditor Ernst & Young, who vetted the software development, will oversee the process.
UEFA said full fixture lists with match dates and kick-off times will be released by Sunday August 31.
Insideworldfootball.com
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