Tottenham are grouped alongside Bayer Leverkusen, Monaco and CSKA Moscow.
Advertisement
The Gunners will take on Paris Saint-Germain, as well as Basel and Ludogrets, in what could be a tricky draw for the group stages. Drawn alongside Liverpool, Real Madrid and Basel, Ludogorets were a testament to the competition, performing admirably, narrowly losing to Liverpool in their opening game, just missing out on a point against Real, with Ronaldo scoring and missing a penalty, and then securing an incredible draw against Liverpool in the return leg.
The Bulgarian’s are not a side we know too strongly about, but they beat Victoria Plzen to qualify for the group stages, and you rarely get an easy match in the elite European competition.
Group D: Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid, PSV Eindhoven, FC Rostov. Bayern have consistently failed to even reach the finals in the last three years under Pep.
A pretty straightforward group for PSG and Arsenal who will expect to qualify against their less-fancied opponents.
Barca and City were drawn in Group C alongside Borussia Moenchengladbach and former European champions Celtic, with recent history clearly favouring the Catalans. Arsene Wenger started out using David Ospina as his Champions League goalkeeper last season before switching back to Petr Cech after the former’s howler against Olympiakos.
Such drama set them up for an exciting group stage.
Dortmund knocked out Real in the semi-finals in 2013 but the Spanish giants came out on top the following season in the last eight.
Apart from the odd heavyweight clash, numerous groups look predictable, a criticism that has increasingly been levelled at the competition in recent years.
‘Look at Basle’s record against English teams and you become cautious’.
For the third season running Serie A has only two teams in the group stage.
Group B: Benfica, Napoli, Dynamo Kiev, Besiktas.
It has been widely reported in the media that organisers UEFA, under pressure from the big clubs to reform the competition, will change the format from 2018-19 to allow four guaranteed places for England, Spain, Italy and Germany.
Advertisement
The UEFA Champions league campaign is upon us.
