UCL Draw: Live Thread

It’s time to find out Barcelona’s European journey!

THE CHAMPIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS...! We all love the Champions League, don’t we? It’s been a little tough for Barcelona fans to watch Europe’s biggest competition over the last few years, but every new season brings renewed hope that we can win our sixth trophy with giant ears.

After about two months of qualification around Europe, we now have 32 teams that will play the group stage of the Champions League starting next month. But we need to find out the actual groups, and we’ll do so today. The much anticipated UEFA Champions League Draw has arrived, and we could get some sweet, sweet groups.

If you’re new to the draw process or need some reminding, here’s how it works:

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POTS

The 32 teams who have qualified for the group stage have been divided in four pots of eight. Pot 1 contains the reigning winners of the Champions League and Europa League, as well as the champions of the six highest-ranked leagues in Europe. The other three pots contain teams ranked via the UEFA club coefficient, which has some complicated math involved but actually does a good job of ranking the best teams in Europe.

These are the four pots:

POT 1: Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, Lokomotiv Moscow

POT 2: Borussia Dortmund, FC Porto, Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Benfica, Napoli, Tottenham Hotspur, AS Roma

POT 3: Liverpool, Schalke 04, Lyon, AS Monaco, Ajax, CSKA Moscow, PSV Eindhoven, Valencia

POT 4: Viktoria Plzen, Club Brugge, Galatasaray, Young Boys, Inter Milan, Hoffenheim, Red Star Belgrade, AEK Athens

DRAW

The draw process is quite straightforward: there are four pots with eight balls each, and each ball represents each team. Then, in numerical order (1-4), balls will be taken from each pot and the teams will be put together in groups. Teams from the same pot and country cannot be in the same group.

WHO CAN BARCELONA DRAW?

This post here will give you a pretty good idea. With so many good teams involved in this draw, however, an easy group should not be your expectation. We might even get Liverpool!

WHEN IS THE DRAW?

The draw starts at 6pm CET (Barcelona), 5pm BST/WAT (UK & Nigeria), 12pm ET, 9am PT (USA), 9.30pm IST (India)

HOW TO WATCH, STREAM CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW

How to watch on TV: BT Sport 2 (UK), Univision Deportes (USA), others

How to stream: UEFA.com

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So now that you have all the information you need, feel free to use the comment section below to share your thoughts on the draw!

Source: barcablaugranes.com