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Two-time defending champion Paris Saint-Germain will host Manchester City and travel to Barcelona in the Champions League main phase this season, after the 36-team draw was made Thursday.
PSG has won three straight visits to Barcelona — including a 2-1 win in the league phase last October — since imploding in the famous 6-1 loss in March 2017 that is known as the “Remontada” game.
The French champion again plays Aston Villa, after a Super Cup win this month, and goes to Champions League newcomer Como, coached by Cesc Fabregas, in an eight-game slate that starts in two weeks’ time.
Real Madrid will host Inter Milan and make two trips to London, at Arsenal and against Shakhtar Donetsk. Ukraine’s champion is playing home games at Stamford Bridge, where Madrid’s returning coach José Mourinho was beloved by Chelsea fans in a pair of title-winning spells there.
Barcelona will host two English clubs — Man City and Europa League winner Villa — plus its former player Fabregas with Como. A long trip to Azerbaijan awaits to face debutant Sabah in Baku.
Arsenal, the beaten finalist last year, will host Madrid, Borussia Dortmund and Sabah, and travel to Bayern Munich.
Bayern got a second English opponent, with a trip to Manchester United, plus two Norwegian opponents, hosting Bodø/Glimt and visiting Viking. Bayern also will go to Atletico Madrid whose Metropolitano Stadium will host the final next May.
Liverpool got trips to Inter Milan and Fenerbahce in what looked one of the more favorable slates of eight games. Atletico will again come to Anfield where Liverpool won 3-2 last September.
Atletico also will play both Norwegian teams and is one of four teams heading inside the Arctic Circle to play on Bodø/Glimt ’s artificial turf. Dortmund, Lille and newcomer LASK also will travel to the remote fishing town, and one team must make the trip in January.
Sabah also will host Dortmund, Napoli and Slavia Prague. Fans also have two long trips from Azerbaijan to England to face Arsenal and Man United.
Como has a second trip to Spain, to play Real Betis as well as Barcelona, and will welcome PSG and Man United to its picture-postcard lakeside stadium home.
Four Debutants In Champions League Draw
Four newcomers will debut in this Champions League edition: Como from Italy, coached by Cesc Fabregas; LASK of Austria; Viking from Norway; and Azerbaijani champion Sabah, which was founded only in 2017.
Sabah coach Valdas Dambrauskas is already making headlines for his curious origin story in soccer. The money he won as a young contestant on TV quiz show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in his native Lithuania funded a trip to study coaching in England.
Another first this season is an African coach taking his team into the main phase. Former Manchester City and Barcelona star Yaya Touré guided Slovakian champion Slovan Bratislava through its qualifying playoff Wednesday. Slovan will visit PSG and host Inter Milan.
Champions League Draw Details
UEFA’s draw software allocated eight opponents to each team — four home games, four away — with two opponents taken from each seeding pot. Seeding was decided by ranking a team’s European results over the past five years. Teams could not be paired with an opponent from their own country.
The first round of games is played Sept. 8-10 with the first six rounds played through December. The league phase resumes in January with the eighth and final round on Jan. 27.
The top eight teams in the final standings go direct to the round of 16 in March. Teams placed ninth to 24th enter the knockout playoffs in February to decide the other eight teams in the round of 16. Teams placed 25th to 36th are eliminated.
The 36 teams will share prize money of about 2.5 billion euros ($2.9 billion)
Reporting by The Associated Press.
