The changes made by UEFA over the seedings for the Champions League is simply going to mean that the Group Stages have every chance of being many times harder than in previous years, when every top team was guaranteed at least one lemon in the Group.
First of all, let’s look at each pot….
Pot 1: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Leicester City, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Benfica, Paris Saint-Germain, CSKA Moscow
Pot 2: Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Arsenal, Sevilla, Porto, Napoli, Bayer Leverkusen, Manchester City
Pot 3: Basel, Tottenham, Dynamo Kiev, Lyon, PSV Eindhoven, Sporting Lisbon, Club Brugge, Borussia Monchengladbach
Pot 4: Monaco, Besiktas, Legia Warsaw, Ludogorets, Celtic, Dinamo Zagreb, Copenhagen, Rostov
So, unless we get very lucky with CSKA Moscow or Benfica, we are guaranteed to get one of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus or Paris Saint-Germain.
Pots 3, and especially 4 or much easier, but we could still end up with a group with Barcelona, Monaco and Borussia Monchengladbach in it!
But let’s be positive. What is the best possible group we could end up with?
I’m going to go with: Benfica, Club Brugge and Celtic. This would mean we get a reasonably easy run plus their will be very little travelling….
What do you think?
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