Champions League draw: New format explained & who Manchester City, Liverpool & Arsenal could face

Manchester City will discover their 2024/25 Champions League opponents on Thursday, along with Arsenal, Liverpool and Aston Villa.

But this season's group stage will look very different, following the format changes made by Uefa. Replacing the traditional eight groups of four teams, will be one 36-team group.

As part of the new-look system, City will face eight different teams in the group, with four home and four away games. The top eight teams will qualify automatically for the last-16, with the teams placed 9th-24th set to enter a play-off to progress to the knockout stage.

In Thursday’s draw, which begins at 5pm, City will be paired with eight of the 32 available teams - excluding the fellow English clubs. All sides will be seeded into pots based on coefficient points, with City set to be ranked in the top tier. Pep Guardiola’s side will then be drawn against two teams from each pot, playing one game at home and another away.

But the complicated manner of the new draw means the traditional way of pulling names out of hat must be scrapped. 

“If the old draw concept for the group stage were to be applied to the new league phase format, nearly 1000 balls would be required, with at least 36 bowls on stage, resulting in an unbearably lengthy draw,” Uefa explained.

“All 36 teams will be manually drawn using physical balls. For every team manually drawn, a designated automated software will randomly draw eight opponents across the four pots, who will be revealed on screen in the draw hall and on television. The software will also decide which matches will be at home and which ones away.”

Pot 1 teams will be drawn first, meaning City will learn their opponents quickly, although the dates of all eight matches won’t be confirmed until Saturday.

Meanwhile, City could face 32 possible opponents, with all the sides known following the midweek qualifiers

Those 32 clubs include: Celtic, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, Stuttgart, AC Milan, Atalanta, Bologna, Inter Milan, Juventus, Brest, Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, Benfica, Sporting Lisbon., Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven, Sturm Graz, Club Brugge, Shakhtar Donetsk, Young Boys, Sparta Prague, RB Salzburg, Dinamo Zagreb, Red Star Belgrade, Slovan Bratislava and Lille.

Thursday’s draw will be streamed live on Uefa’s website, with the first group game of the season to be played over 17-19 September.