Soccer

2020-21 Champions League: All you need to know before Thursday’s draw

The draw for the group stages will take place in Geneva at 4pm

Bayern Munich are the holders of the Champions League. Photograph: Miguel A Lopes/Getty

Wed Sep 30 2020 - 14:27

When is the draw?

The draw begins at 4pm Irish Time on Thursday in Geneva.

How does it work?

Eight groups of four teams will be drawn. The teams are first split into four seeding pots and each group will have one team from each pot.

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No teams from the same country can face one another and clubs from Russia and Ukraine will be kept apart.

The identity of 29 teams is known and the final three places will be determined in the second legs of the remaining play-offs on Wednesday night.

How are the pots decided?

Pot one consists of the holders (Bayern Munich), the Europa League winners (Sevilla) and the champions of the nations ranked highest by Uefa who have not earned a place by winning either of those tournaments. Pots two to four are are determined by the club coefficient rankings.

Which clubs are in which pot?

Pot one: Bayern, Sevilla, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, Zenit Saint Petersburg, Porto.

Pot two: Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Manchester City, Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea, Ajax.

Pot three: Dynamo Kyiv, RB Leipzig, Internazionale, Olympiakos, Lazio, Atalanta, and two more teams to be determined after Wednesday's play-offs.

Other teams who have qualified: Lokomotiv Moscow, Marseille, Club Brugge, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Istanbul Basaksehir, Rennes, Ferencvaros.

Remaining play-offs (first-leg score in brackets): FC Midtjylland (0) v Slavia Prague (0); Red Bull Salzburg (2) v Maccabi Tel-Aviv (1); PAOK Salonika (1) v FK Krasnodar (2).

When are the group games?

They will be played on October 20th-21st, October 27th-28th, November 3rd-4th, November 24th-25th, December 1st-2nd and December 8th-9th.

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