UEFA Champions League: Group stage draw on Thursday

This Thursday, Borussia will learn which opponents they will face in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League. The draw takes place at 17:00 CEST in Geneva.

Focus finally returns to the UEFA Champions League this week. The draw for the 2020/21 group stage takes place in Geneva, Switzerland, at 17:00 CEST on Thursday (live on uefa.com). A total of 32 teams will go into the draw, separated into four seeded pots. The top eight seeds are the reigning champions of the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League, as well as the winners of the top six ranked European leagues according to UEFA coefficient. Since FC Bayern München already have a place in pot one after winning last season’s Champions League, their spot as league winners is passed down to FC Porto, champions of Europe’s seventh-highest ranked league. Pots two through four are simply sorted by UEFA coefficient, meaning that Borussia lie in pot four along with the other seven teams with the lowest coefficients among participating clubs. The Foals have a coefficient score of 26,000. Each group will consist of four teams – one from each pot – and clubs from the same nation are unable to face each other in the group stage.

This season, UEFA Champions League matchdays will be played in two blocks of three consecutive weeks:

• Matchday 1: 20th/21st October
• Matchday 2: 27th/28th October
• Matchday 3: 3rd/4th November
• Matchday 4: 24th/25th November
• Matchday 5: 1st/2nd December
• Matchday 6: 8th/9th December

Here is how the final pots look for the draw:

• Pot 1: Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus, Bayern München, Paris St. Germain, Zenit St. Petersburg, FC Porto, Sevilla
• Pot 2: FC Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Manchester City, Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea, Ajax
• Pot 3: Dynamo Kiev, RB Salzburg, RB Leipzig, Inter Milan, Olympiacos, Lazio, Krasnodar, Atalanta
• Pot 4: Lokomotiv Moscow, Olympique Marseille, Club Brugge, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Istanbul Başakşehir, Midtjylland, Stade Rennes, Ferencvaros