Champions League 2026-27

Asterix

The draw takes place on Thursday (Friday morning for those of us ahead of the game). The Pots are:

Pot 1
Arsenal
PSG
Bayern
Real Madrid
Liverpool
Manchester City
Barcelona
Inter Milan
Atletico Madrid

Pot 2
Aston Villa
Manchester United
Borussia Dortmund
Roma
Sporting
Porto
Club Brugge
PSV
Betis

Pot 3
Feyenoord
Lille
Napoli
RB Leipzig
Villareal
Shakhtar
Galatasaray

Pot 4
Bodo Glimt
LASK
Sabah
Slavia Prague
Stuttgart
Como
Lens
Winner of Fenerbahce ~~vs Lyon~~
~~Winner of Dinamo Zagreb~~ vs Viking
Winner of Slovan Bratislava vs ~~Celje~~
~~Winner of Levski Sofia~~ vs AEK Athens

all those ties are currently level so should be some fun.

Personally I'd like Sporting (to see young Aussie Nestory Irankunda), Villareal and LASK.

TambourineMan

lol Celtic

Claudius

Pots 3 and 4 smell like Europa nights with Emery.

Meatwad

doesn't matter to us, but i'm sure the rest of europe is happy that we're in pot 1 now. last year we were a pot 1 level team sitting in pot 2 and since everyone has to draw two pot 1 teams those that drew us basically were getting 3 pot 1 teams.

GooneriC

We have a tough draw this time around

GooneriC

Real Madrid (home)
Bayern Munich (away)
Borussia Dortmund (home)
Real Betis (away)
Lille (home)
Napoli (away)
Sabah (home)
Slavia Prague (away)

samthegooner

Tough draw but love it. Getting battle tested against the absolute cream of the crop will definitely help us in the long run. I'm glad we aren't going to get our typical Atleti/Inter combo.

Don Pacifico

Thank goodness we're not wasting time flying to Azerbaijan to play Sabah.

Some good ties - all very winnable although naturally Madrid and Bayern will provide stern tests.

JazzG

When you look at other top clubs a lot have tough draws.

The R.Madrid and Bayern games will be tough but good to challenge ourselves early in the season.

GooneriC

Without Saliba and Timber and no signing thats makes improvement in attack , I can see those first 3 games going badly for us.

Mirth

GooneriC I’ll take the other side. No way will we go 3 games without a win.

RowJimmy

GooneriC
That's listed as pot 1 pot 2 etc., not the order in which they will be played.

Meatwad

GooneriC
that's not the order the games are played. they are listed there from pots 1 to 4.

GooneriC

RowJimmy thanks for that info , hopefully the bigger games are spread out then

USArsenal

Real and Bayern are the bigger games of course. The other games are pretty winnable (well they all are actually winnable, but those two are the sternest tests). When do they come out with the actual schedule?

Don Pacifico

For the record, I'm still not sold on this new CL format. The fact we're playing the (same) big teams every season in the league phase is kinda boring.

samthegooner

Don Pacifico I miss the old format and "groups of death" in general. We don't have them in the expanded WC or this new Champions League and it used to always be a fun debate and wrinkle thrown into the fall.

awooga83

Don Pacifico this totally, the attraction was the rarity of the games and usually you meet the big teams if you got through to the business end. It's why I think the super league would also be so boring.

Klaus

We'll best all of those teams. Bayern didn't have enough last time eh?

MistaT

God damnnnn that's a heavy set of fixtures

Pepe LeFrits

I don't think it's too bad. Every team gets some challenging fixtures. That said, Liverpool got the easiest draw of the pot 1 teams I reckon.