Every aspect of world football is frantic this year to accommodate the novel World Cup in Qatar. It affects the transfer market, dates and fixtures, the strain on players etc. In such a strange atmosphere, the UEFA Champions League draw is made tonight at 19.00 in Stanbul – that’s a week earlier than usual. It’s good that it happens earlier because we cannot wait!##NAJAVA_MECA_6593179##We’ve got the last three clubs to enter the competition on Wednesday night. Rangers of Scotland, Dinamo of Croatia and Copenhagen of Denmark will join 29 more elite clubs for the group stage that will kick off on 2 November and stretch over nine weeks – and not the standard 12 weeks – all to finish in time for the Qatar 2022 preparations.There will only be three weeks without Champions League games between the groups starting and ending. Two of those land during the September international break – and the other in mid-October has a full round of midweek Premier League games. That promises a very dense calendar which many clubs’ officials and players won’t enjoy. But we, the fans of the beautiful game, won’t complain!All goals from some of greatest players in #UCL history 🤤🤤🤤Watch now on https://t.co/AmDdmbCFld 👇— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) August 24, 2022 Pot 1 contains the titleholders of the Champions League and the Europa League (Eintracht Frankfurt), plus the champions of Europe’s top six leagues — the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the Liga Portugal. As Real Madrid secured the league and UCL double, there is a vacant place among the top seeds, and that goes to the champions of the seventh-best European league. In this case, it’s the Dutch Eredivisie and its champion Ajax.Pots 2 to 4 are ordered on UEFA coefficient, which measures results and performances in Europe over a five-year period.Pot 1: Real Madrid, Eintracht Frankfurt, Manchester City, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Paris St-Germain, Porto, Ajax.Pot 2: Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, Leipzig, Tottenham.Pot 3: Borussia Dortmund, Salzburg, Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan, Napoli, Benfica, Sporting Lisbon, Bayer Leverkusen.Pot 4: Rangers, Marseille, Copenhagen, Club Bruges, Celtic, Viktoria Plzen, Maccabi Haifa, Dinamo Zagreb.One team from each pot is drawn into a group, which cannot contain more than one club from a single league.There will be no Russian teams in this season’s Champions League as part of the Uefa punishment because of the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk will play their group games in Poland, some 1,400 km from their home stadium.The final is at Istanbul’s Ataturk Olympic Stadium on 10 June 2023. It was initially meant to be the venue for the 2020 final and then the 2021 showpiece, but both finals were moved to Portugal because of Covid restrictions.
