Who plays whom next season in the champs league « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Tony Attwood

I have to say that in setting up this article I am not so much saying “this is how it is going to be” but hoping you will be able to write in and tell me more about how the seedings work in practice for the Champions League next season.

I have heard tell that Man City will not be in pot one.  Arsenal will, of course, because we are currently ranked 6th in Europe by Uefa, one place behind Real Madrid.  The group stage elimination last season did Man C no good at all.

Uefa’s system is based on a club’s performance in the five previous seasons – the more you play in the Champs League and get through the group stages the higher you get.  Man City are 28th.

This is actually rather interesting in terms of the “Arsenal is a failure for not having won a trophy for x years” argument the press and on Match of the Day – and their minions in the AAA.   Clubs that fail to get in the top four but win a league cup or something find they slip down the Uefa rankings.   Liverpool of course had a high position because of their past success, but each year without entry sees them dropping further and further.  They are 11th this year, and one more year without entry would certainly see them drop from the top seedings.

But position in the Uefa list doesn’t seem to be everything.  And so as far as I can work out, here are the clubs in the Champions League, and their seeding…

Pot 1 (top seeds)

• Chelsea
• Manchester United
• Barcelona
• Bayern Munich
• Real Madrid
• Arsenal
• AC Milan
• Valencia

Pot 2

• Manchester City
• Porto
• Zenit St. Petersburg
• Benfica
• Shakhtar Donetsk

Pot 3

• Juventus
• Paris Saint-Germain

Pot 4

• Borussia Dortmund
• Olympiacos

Uncertain how the seedings will work

• Montpellier
• Ajax
• Galatasaray
• Schalke 04
• Nordsjælland

Play-off round

These clubs enter in the play off round – the round the 4th team in England usually gets placed in, and have to play a home and away tie for entry into the group stage.  Obviously this year it didn’t happen that way and Tottenham have to play in the Europa League.

• Málaga
• Udinese
• Braga
• Borussia Mönchengladbach
• Lille
• Spartak Moscow

Finally there will be some clubs from the qualifying rounds who make it through.  Here is the list of those excused until the third qualifying round – clubs that enter earlier tend not to make it to the group stages.

• Anderlecht
• Dynamo Kyiv
• Panathinaikos
• Vaslui
• CFR Cluj
• Feyenoord
• Copenhagen
• Motherwell
• Celtic
• Fenerbahçe
• Club Brugge

Rangers are currently banned from Europe and so Motherwell is taking their place in the Champions League play off.

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