Champions League draw: New format to reveal 2024-25 season fixtures – live | Champions League
Key facts
Now a price for Cristiano Ronaldowho is here in person to receive the award for the top scorer in the history of the Champions League. We joke about the fact that he is no longer participating in the tournament and we ask him what his favorite Champions League title is.
Ronaldo recalls Manchester United’s 2008 win over Chelsea, and the first against Real Madrid after which “the Champions Leagues flowed like ketchup.”
UEFA CEO Aleksander Ceferin is here to hand out a few awards to his all-time Champions League best players. First up, his pick for the best goalkeeper: Gigi Buffon! It’s hard to argue with that choice, even if it’s never really won the Champions League.
Thanks Michael and good morning everyone. How are we feeling tonight?! The big party is in full swing in Monaco, with an opera singer on stage in a glittering outfit to perform the Champions League anthem in its entirety, in front of a montage of the decisive moments of the European Cup victory.
I’m just the hype mansent out early to warm up the crowd. Niall McVeigh will be blogging for the draw/main event. Enjoy!
UEFA calls this the “league phase draw”if you can decipher this.
Here are the pots for the drawThis is obviously a sort of ranking system, composed according to the ranking of the clubs’ coefficients established at the start of the season and with the reigning Champions League champion as the seed in Pot 1.
Pots
Pot 1
1. Real Madrid (ESP)
2. Manchester City (ENGLAND)
3. Bayern Munich (GER)
4. Paris Saint-Germain (FRA)
5. Liverpool (ENGLAND)
6. International (ITA)
7. Borussia Dortmund (GER)
8. RB Leipzig (GER)
9. Barcelona (ESP)
Pot two
10. Bayer Leverkusen (GER)
11. Atletico Madrid (ESP)
12. Atalanta (ITA)
13. Juventus (ITA)
14. Benfica (POR)
15. Arsenal (England)
16. Club Bruges KV (BEL)
17. Shakhtar Donetsk (UK)
18. Milan (Italy)
Pot three
19. Feyenoord (Netherlands)
20. Sporting Lisbon (POR)
21. PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands)
22. GNK Dinamo (CRO)
23. RB Salzburg (AUT)
24. Lille (FRA)
25. Red Star Belgrade (SRB)
26. Young boys (SUI)
27. Celtic (SCO)
Pot four
28. Slovakian Bratislava (SVK)
29. Monaco (FRA)
30. Sparta Prague (Czech Republic)
31. Aston Villa (ENGLAND)
32. Bologna 1909 (ITA)
33. Girona (ESP)
34. Stuttgart (Germany)
35. Tour of Graz (AUT)
36. Brest (FRA)
Here’s UEFA’s explanation of what the pots actually mean and how the draw will take place.
Once the team name is displayed, the automated software randomly draws eight opponents for that team, two from each pot (1, 2, 3 and 4), indicating for each opponent whether they are playing at home or away. The order of allocation of opponents starts with pot 1 (two opponents), followed by the other pots in descending order. The software randomly draws the possible valid opponents from all pots, respecting the drawing conditions mentioned above, and ensuring that a valid allocation is made, ensuring that the complete draw and the schedule of matches in line with the competition schedule can be made for all teams. This allocation by the software is done within a predefined time frame.
Once the software has determined the valid seeding, the opponents and home/away games are revealed. The procedure is then repeated for all remaining teams in Pot 1.
Do you understand? Good.
Rather than a former champion fumbling around a bag of ballsor Rod Steward making faces in front of the cameras, this raffle format carries an additional risk: cyberattack.
“We take cybersecurity very seriously,” said Dave Gill, AE Live’s chief executive. “It’s clearly a sensitive topic. I hesitate to go into detail about what we do, but I can assure you that we’ve taken every step possible to ensure that everything is as safe and secure as possible.” Gill said his company had been targeted by attacks while working on FIFA’s draw for Qatar 2022 after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. “We’ve had experience of that,” he added. “We’ve done risk assessments and put precautions in place.”
Preamble
Here we go again. The battle for Ol’ Big Ears is back in full swing with this draw. Normally, it would be for the group stage, but it’s a new world. We don’t know if we like it (yet).
How will the new format work?
It is a high-stakes experiment by UEFA, initially implemented for the 2024-27 Champions League cycle. The old group stage has been replaced by a single 36-team ranking, with each team playing eight matches against eight different opponents, four at home and four away. This model, known as the “Swiss model”, boils down to a top eight, which qualifies directly for the knockout phase, with 16 teams playing a play-off round. Teams finishing between 25th and 36th will be eliminated at the end of the league phase in January. The knockout stages will be similar to those before, with the round of 16 leading up to a final in May, this time in Munich, and will be organised in such a way that clubs can plot their potential paths.
How will the draw take place?
A new “hybrid concept” will replace the traditional method of drawing balls from balls. Each team will be drawn by hand before software designed by AE Live, a technology solutions provider that works with many major sporting institutions, selects their eight opponents. No club can play another team from its own domestic league or play more than two games against teams from a given country. Fans with their fingers on Skyscanner can rest assured that the fixture list, including the order in which the games are played, will not be published until Saturday.
The draw will take place at 5pm BST and should last about an hour! How exactly it will work, I have no idea!
