Paris Saint-Germain will have a lot to do with matches against Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Arsenal, during the new version of the first round of the Champions League, full of sumptuous matches according to the draw made on Thursday.
A new era is beginning and the four French clubs involved – PSG, Monaco, Brest and Lille – will fully experience it in view of the upcoming matches.
A new format
In this new first phase called “league”, each club will face eight teams. These eight matches will take place between September 17 and January 29, with the objective of finishing among the top eight in the ranking of the thirty-six teams involved.
Play-offs will allow teams ranked 9th to 24th to also try to qualify.
Calibration
PSG, designed to outrageously dominate French football, will be able to quickly gauge its position against its European rivals, notably Guardiola’s City, while its Qatari owners have ambitions of winning the cup with the big ears.
For the other Ligue 1 clubs, the step is just as high. Monaco will notably host FC Barcelona, Benfica Lisbon and Red Star Belgrade. Brest, one of the C1’s smallest teams, will host (probably at the Roudourou stadium in Guingamp) Real Madrid and will travel to Barcelona. As for Lille, who snatched their qualification on Wednesday evening in the play-offs, they will host Real Madrid, Juventus Turin and will go to Liverpool or Atlético Madrid.
Dizzy
If we add matches between mammoths, like Liverpool – Real Madrid, Barcelona – Bayern or City – Inter Milan, it’s a plethora of gala posters that were given at a hellish pace by a computer. Cristiano Ronaldo was content to activate it at each stage, from Monaco, after the hand drawing of a ball by Gianluigi Buffon.
Enough to make fans used to manually drawing balls from bowls dizzy, to create groups of four teams, in the format of previous years. With this new formula, the objective was sporting for UEFA, but also political to cut the grass under the feet of a possible Super League, a project that regularly resurfaces…
> The opponents of…
… Paris : Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Atlético de Madrid, Arsenal, PSV Eindhoven, Salzburg, Gérone, Stuttgart.
… Monaco : Barcelona, Inter Milan, Benfica Lisbon, Arsenal, ER Belgrade, Aston Villa, Bologna.
… Lille : Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus Turin, Atletico Madrid, Feyenoord, SC Portugal, Sturm Graz, Bologne.
… Brest : Real Madrid, Barcelona, Leverkusen, Shakhtar, PSV Eindhoven, Salzburg, Sturm Graz, Sparta Prague.
