Champions League holders Paris St Germain will face Bayern Munich and Barcelona in this season’s league phase. Meanwhile, Real Madrid, the record 15-time winners, will go up against Manchester City and Liverpool after Thursday’s draw set up some blockbuster encounters.
PSG will also meet Premier League sides Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United, along with Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen in the new league phase format which began last season. Each club plays eight games—four at home and four away.
Real Madrid will play Manchester City again for a fifth consecutive season and will travel to Liverpool, marking a homecoming for Trent Alexander-Arnold, the English fullback who left Anfield to join Real in the close season.
Real will also take on Juventus at home and have a long flight to Eastern Europe to face Kazakhstan side Kairat Almaty, who stunned Celtic in the playoffs to qualify for the first time.
Last season’s league phase table toppers Liverpool will also face Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid, and Eintracht Frankfurt, while Bayern will play Chelsea, Arsenal, and Club Brugge.
Pep Guardiola’s City will host Dortmund, Leverkusen, and Napoli, while they make two trips to Spain to face Real and Villarreal.
Last season’s runners-up Inter Milan will host Liverpool and Arsenal, and the Italian side will travel to Borussia Dortmund and Atletico Madrid.
Barcelona, LaLiga champions and last year’s semifinalists, will host PSG and face away games at Chelsea and Newcastle.
Arsenal, semifinalists last season, also play Atletico Madrid and Club Brugge, but their biggest opponents are Bayern, whom they have faced 14 times in the competition. They have also failed to beat the German side in the last five encounters.
The Premier League has the most representatives with six clubs after last season’s top five—Liverpool, Arsenal, City, Chelsea, and Newcastle—qualified along with Europa League winners Tottenham.
Spurs will play Borussia Dortmund and Villarreal as well as PSG, while Serie A champions Napoli face Chelsea, Man City, Frankfurt, and Benfica.
Newcastle has returned to the Champions League but faces a tough path to the knockout phase after being placed in pot four, drawing Barca, PSG, Benfica, and Leverkusen among the teams they will face.
The league phase gets underway with 36 teams playing on eight matchdays between September 16 and January 28. The knockout phase begins in February, while the final will be played on May 30 at the Puskas Arena in Budapest.
Chelsea was honored with a special award for becoming the first club to win the Champions League, the Europa League, the Conference League, the Super Cup, and the now-defunct UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup.
Former Sweden striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic was named the winner of the UEFA President’s Award.
