Look, we all know how this works by now. 5pm CET, somewhere in Switzerland. Thirty-two teams in four pots, redirected into eight groups via the medium of plastic mini footballs in salad bowls. At least one extremely talented former footballer will have trouble opening said mini-balls.
Someone will be dumped into a hellishly difficult group, commonly known as “the Slavia Prague”. There will be a weird group with four middling teams of very similar ability. There will be shoehorned awards, arcane TV broadcast rules and of course, Pedro Pinto. So let’s get on with it, shall we?
Pot one: Bayern Munich, Sevilla, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus, PSG, Zenit, Porto.
Pot two: Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Manchester City, Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea, Ajax.
Pot three: Dynamo Kyiv, Red Bull Salzburg, RB Leipzig, Internazionale, Olympiakos, Lazio, Krasnodar, Atalanta.
Pot four: Lokomotiv Moscow, Marseille, Club Brugge, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Istanbul Basaksehir, FC Midtjylland, Rennes, Ferencvaros.
