UEFA Champions League Group Stage Draw: Will we see two Groups of Death?
With all the UEFA Champions League qualifiers complete, the final 32 teams will go into a draw to decide which of the eight groups they will go into for the group stage.
With Arsenal, Athletic Bilabao and Bayer Leverkusen wining their qualifiers, the Premier League, La Liga and Bundesliga will see four teams each.
The Serie A will only see two teams after Napoli were beaten in their qualifier. Portugal will see more teams than Italy with Benfica, Porto and Sporting qualifying.
In all, teams from 18 different countries will play in this season’s Champions League group stage. They will vie for a place in the knockout stages and eventually play the final at the Olympiastadion in Berlin.
Teams in four pots
The teams are divided into four pots with eight teams in each pot based on their 2014 UEFA club coefficients. A group is formed by picking one team from each pot and no team can play another club from the same league until the quarter-final stage.
Real Madrid have the highest club co-efficient with 161.54, closely followed by Barcelona with 157.54. Bayern Munich is third with 154.32.
Arsenal, in spite of having to qualify through a qualifier, still make it to pot 1 with a co-efficient of 112.94. Only the teams in Pot 1 have a co-efficient above 100.
| POT 1 | POT 2 | POT 3 | POT 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real Madrid | Borussia Dortmund | Bayer Leverkusen | Anderlecht |
| Barcelona | Schalke 04 | Liverpool | AS Roma |
| Atletico Madrid | Juventus | Olympiakos | APOEL |
| Arsenal | Paris Saint-Germain | CSKA Moscow | BATE Borisov |
| Chelsea | Shakhtar Donetsk | Ajax | Ludogorets |
| Benfica | Basel | Sporting | Maribor |
| Porto | Zenit St. Petersburg | Galatasaray | Monaco |
| Bayern Munich | Manchester City | Athletic Bilbao | Malmo |
Possible Groups of Death
With teams like Liverpool, Ajax and Manchester city not getting into Pot 1, we could see a number of possible Groups of Death.
Liverpool could be in for a tough draw as they are in pot 3. The 2005 winners could face either of the La Liga clubs or Bayern (Pot 1), Dortmund or Juventus (Pot 2) and AS Roma (Pot 4).
Manchester City can also be drawn with either of the La Liga clubs or Bayern (Pot 1), Galatasaray or Bayer Leverkusen (Pot 2) and AS Roma (Pot 4)
Arsenal and Chelsea could have it either way. For example, they could be drawn with Basel, Sporting and Maribor or they could be drawn with PSG, Ajax and Roma.