The UEFA Champions League is almost ready to start rolling for another year. It will be a special edition for the top European club competition, since it celebrates thirty years under this name, after the extinction in 1992 of the old European Cup. In addition, it is expected to be entertaining, since there is no hype that does not have at least one tournament champion. The last three vacancies have been decided on Wednesday. Dinamo Zagreb, Rangers and Copenhagen will complete pot four.
The group stage of the Champions League will be established after the draw to be held this Thursday, August 25, in Istanbul, Turkey. The ceremony will begin at 6:00 p.m. (Spanish time). It can be seen live through Movistar Plus Champions League and can also be followed on the La Vanguardia website.
As is and will be customary until the change of format planned for 2024, the 32 teams qualified for the Champions League will be divided into eight groups of four, which will play each other two-legged. 26 of the 32 clubs qualified directly, due to their result in domestic competition last season or due to their merits in Europe. The other six teams had to overcome a previous phase. Three of them already made it through on Tuesday, when the return matches were played between Red Star and Maccabi Haifa, Benfica and Dinamo kyiv, and Viktoria Plzen and Qarabag. Israelis, Portuguese and Czechs will be in this thirtieth edition of the Champions League. The other three certified their presence last Wednesday.
For the draw, the clubs are divided into four pots. In the first, that of the champions, the only Spanish representative is Real Madrid, current champion of the League and Champions. He is accompanied by Eintracht Frankfurt as winner of the last edition of the Europa League and the six domestic champions from England, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal and the Netherlands. The other three qualified Spanish clubs, Barça, Atlético de Madrid and Sevilla, will be in pot two, but they will not be able to come out in the same group as Real Madrid, since teams of the same nationality cannot coincide. Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, Leipzig and Juventus complete the hype.
In the third pot there are three European champions, an indicative figure of the competitiveness that is expected in this edition of the competition. They are Inter Milan (winners in 1964, 1965 and 2010), Borussia Dortmund (winners in 1997) and Benfica (winners in 1961 and 1962), who closed their classification brilliantly in the qualifying round by thrashing Dynamo kyiv . Other historic clubs complete the hype: Napoli, Shakhtar Donetsk, Bayer Leverkusen, Salzburg and Sporting CP.
Finally, in pot four there are two other European champions, Celtic (winner in 1967, first British champion) and Olympique de Marseille (winner in 1993), which could have been three if PSV (winner in 1988) had overtaken the Rangers. Club Brugge and newcomers Viktoria Plzen and Maccabi Haifa are also part of this latest hype.
