Now that the qualifiers have officially come to an end, the 2022/23 Champions League draw is set to take place in Istanbul on Thursday.
The 2022/23 Champions League group stage will kick off on September 6, earlier than usual due to the 2022 World Cup, which will take place in Qatar in November and December.
Which teams are in which pot for the Champions League group stage draw?
The first pot includes reigning champions Real Madrid, Europa League winners Eintracht Frankfurt and the champions of the next top six European leagues based on UEFA country coefficients. These six teams will be Manchester City, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Ajax and Porto.
As for the second pot, it consists of very strong sides such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, RB Leipzig and Tottenham Hotspur.
The third pot can’t be considered as weak either, as it includes European powerhouses such as Borussia Dortmund, Napoli and Inter, as well as Benfica, RB Salzburg, Shakhtar Donetsk, Bayer Leverkusen and Sporting CP.
As for the fourth pot, it consists of Club Brugge, Celtic, Maccabi Haifa, Viktoria Plzen, Marseille, Rangers, Copenhagen and Dinamo Zagreb. Most of these teams made it to the group stage through the qualifiers.
Who are the teams to avoid in the Champions League group stage?
Eintracht Frankfurt, Porto or Ajax may be considered as the easiest opponents from Pot 1, while teams may wish to be drawn with RB Leipzig from the second pot.
The fact that Shakhtar will play away from Ukraine due to the ongoing war with Russia could make many teams consider them as winnable rivals from pot three, while Marseille, Rangers or Celtic are seen as the tougher opponents a team could get from Pot 4.
There will surely be one or two groups of death along the way, as there always is, while one club might be gifted a kind draw if they have an especially lucky Thursday evening.
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