This Thursday, Sporting and Benfica will find out their opponents in the renewed Champions League. The draw will take place in Monaco (17:00 with a live broadcast on CMTV) and will be completely different from the previous model.
There are no more groups and there will be a single league of 36 participants. Each team plays eight games (four at home and four away) against two opponents from each of four baskets, depending on their UEFA ranking.
At the end of this stage, the top eight classified participants will advance directly to the 1/8 finals.
The teams ranked 9th and 24th out of 16 will play a two-legged playoff to reach the remaining eight teams that will advance to the playoffs and join the teams that qualified directly.
From this point on, the competition continues until the final as before, i.e. with a two-legged knockout. Those who took places from 15th to 36th are excluded from the European Cups, since there is no “drop-out” into the Europa League.
Possible opponents:
POT 1
real Madrid
Manchester City
Bayern Munich
PSG
Liverpool
Inter Milan
Borussia Dortmund
RB Leipzig
Barcelona
POT 2
Bayer Leverkusen
Atletico Madrid
Atalanta
Juventus
BENFICA
Arsenal
Club Bruges
Shakhtar Donetsk
Milan
POT 3
Feyenoord
SPORTING
PSV Eindhoven
Dinamo Zagreb
RB Salzburg
Young Boys
Lille
Red Star
Celtic
POT 4
Slovan Bratislava
Monaco
Sparta Prague
Aston Villa
Bologna
Girona
Stuttgart
Storming Graz
Brest
Author: Mario Pereira
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Dave Martin, and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. As a part of my work, I write for 24 News Reporters, covering mostly sports-related topics. With more than 5 years of experience as a journalist, I have written numerous articles on various topics to provide accurate information to readers.