08/26/2021 10:01
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 08/26/2021 12:39 PM
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The 2021/2022 Champions League draw will take place this noon in Istanbul, at 13 in Argentina, with 32 teams waiting to know in which group they will play the next edition of the maximum club tournament in Europe.
And the great focus of attraction will be the fate of Paris Saint Germain, who hired Lionel Messi and assembled a dream team of figures to win this competition for the first time in its history.
08.26.2021
12:39
Expectation
.
There are 20 minutes until the start of the ceremony in Istanbul, a gala conditioned by health protocols, but which will be followed closely through official UEFA channels.
08.26.2021
12:35
Champion reinforced
.
Tuchel's Chelsea, winner of the 2021 edition, beating Guardiola's Manchester City very well in the final, broke the pig and had the pleasure of hiring an implacable scorer for the 2022 Champions: Romelu Lukaku returned to Les Blues with the idea to obtain the bicampeonato.
Candidate.
08.26.2021
12:37
Lukaku arrived at Chelsea and has already made his debut on the net.
Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP.
08.26.2021
12:30
Messi, the star man
.
PSG is a candidate to win the first Champions League in its history thanks to the arrival of the Argentine star.
Leo will play this tournament for the first time without the Barcelona shirt, where he won 4 trophies.
08.26.2021
12:35
Messi, Di María and Paredes, teammates at PSG.
08.26.2021
12:26
The flashes are taken
.
One of the attractions of the Champions League is that no less than 10 candidates could be named in the previous to stay with "the orejona".
But one stands out for the level of his squad and the hierarchy he added at the time of reinforcements: Paris Saint Germain.
08.26.2021
12:29
The reinforcements of PSG, protagonists at the start of the season.
Photo: GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP.
08.26.2021
12:04
The dates for the group stage:
Date 1: September 14-15
Date 2: September 28-29
Date 3: October 19-20
Date 4: November 2-3
Date 5: November 23-24
Date 6: December 7-8
Dates for the group stage: Date 1: September 14-15 Date 2: September 28-29 Date 3: October 19-20 Date 4: November 2-3 Date 5: November 23-24 Date 6 : December 7-8
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12:01
Pot 4.
Dynamo Kiev (UCR), Young Boys (SUI), Besiktas (TUR), Malmo (SUE), Bruges (BEL), Milan (ITA), Wolfsburg (ALE) and FC Sheriff (Moldova).
08.26.2021
11:59
Pot 3.
Porto (POR), Benfica (POR), Ajax (HOL), RB Leipzig (ALE), Atalanta (ITA), Zenit (RUS), Shakhtar (Ukraine) and Salzburg (Austria).
08.26.2021
11:54
Pot 2.
Real Madrid (ESP), Barcelona (ESP), Juventus (ITA), Manchester United (ING), Paris Saint-Germain (FRA), Liverpool (ENG), Sevilla (ESP) and Borussia Dortmund (ALE).
08.26.2021
11:52
Pot 1.
Chelsea (ING), Villarreal (ESP), Bayern (ALE), Manchester City (ING) Atlético de Madrid (ESP), Inter Milan (ITA), Sporting CP (POR) and LOSC Lille (FRA).
08.26.2021
11:49
How does the giveaway work?
The teams will be divided into four seeded pots.
Pot 1 will be comprised of the Champions League champion, the UEFA Europa League winner and the champions of the six highest-ranked countries that have not qualified through one of the 2020/21 continental titles.
Pots 2, 3 and 4 will be determined based on the club coefficient ranking.
No team can play against a team from the same federation.
Any other restrictions will be announced prior to the draw ceremony.
08.26.2021
11:41
The 2021/22 edition of the Champions League, which will have Chelsea as the defending champion, will begin on September 14 and the final will be played on Saturday, May 28 at the Saint Petersburg Stadium, in Russia.
08.26.2021
11:39
All set in Istanbul.
The ceremony will
begin at 13 Argentina and will be broadcast live on the official channels of the UEFA.
Four drums with eight clubs in each of them, designated by sporting merit, will be the protagonists of an event that can be seen through traditional TV, with live broadcast by ESPN, but also via streaming, through the official website of the Champions League on Facebook Watch.
It will be chance that defines whether Leo's PSG, located in pot 2, will have to cross, for example, with Cholo Simeone's Atlético Madrid, Guardiola's Manchester City and Cristiano Ronaldo? Lewandowski's Bayern Munich or the champion Chelsea, who
was reinforced with Romelu Lukaku
, all part of Pot 1.
Chelsea, champion of the Champions 2021. Photo: Adam Davy / PA Wire / dpa.
But pay attention because in this pot 2 other powerful ones also appear such as Barcelona, Juventus, Manchester United, Liverpool or Real Madrid, which is determined to break the market with the purchase of Kylian Mbappé in exchange for almost 200 million dollars.
In drums 3 and 4 there are names to take into account, some of them with a long history in the Old Continent and
others who are regular entertainers
in this type of event: Ajax, Porto, Benfica, the cupbearer Milan, Atalanta or RB Leipzig , semi-finalist in 2020.
Real Madrid, the biggest winner in history, will be part of Pot 2 and will no longer have Sergio Ramos, who left for PSG.
Photo: EFE / EPA / ANDY RAIN.
Among all of them also appears the FC Sheriff, a small team founded in 1997 that will play for the first time in the Champions League and has the peculiarity of being
within a separatist territory
located within Moldova, not recognized by the other states.
Its story is from a movie and promises more chapters.
The groups of the 67th edition of the Champions begin to be played between September 14 and 15, and there will be six games until the last date, between December 7 and 8.
The round of 16 begins in February and there the elimination rounds will begin
until the grand final, scheduled for May 28
in Saint Petersburg.
Will Messi be in Russia?
The draw drums
Pot 1:
Chelsea, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Atlético de Madrid, Villarreal, Lille, Inter Milan and Sporting de Portugal.
Pot 2:
PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester United, Sevilla and Borussia Dortmund.
Pot 3:
Porto, Ajax, Atalanta, Leipzig, Zenit, Benfica, Shakhtar and Salzburg.
Pot 4:
Milan, Wolfsburg, Bruges, Malmö, Young Boys, Dinamo Kiev, Besiktas and Sheriff.
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A different Champions
A different Champions is coming.
For starters, it will be the first in 16 years with Lionel Messi outside of Barcelona, who will share a team
with Sergio Ramos, Neymar and company in Paris
.
To this is added the return of the public to the stadiums (in the last edition 30% of capacity returned, but it is expected that the numbers of spectators will return to normal).
There will also be a change in the away goal rule, which will completely alter the way the knockout stages are played.
The famous "away goal is worth double" will cease to exist
in football on the Old Continent, leaving the definition solely for the difference in the overall result.
Pep Guardiola wants revenge with his Manchester City, finalist in 2021. Photo: Pierre Philippe Marcou / Pool via AP.
As every year, all teams are excited to achieve glory and conquer the continent.
But when analyzed from a more objective point of view, few have a real chance of winning the title.
At least on paper, there are always teams that start the tournament with an advantage.
This season is no different, and there are some who arrive as favorites. The first and most logical is Chelsea, the last champion and who signed Lukaku as the missing piece in the machine.
The second candidate is the one who fell to the Blues in the final: Pep Guardiola's Manchester City
, who seems to be close to getting the services of Cristiano Ronaldo
.
To that list is added one of the ones that generates the most intrigue in the general public, Messi's Paris Saint-Germain, who reached the final in 2020 and semis in 2021, and has strengthened like no other.
Others who join the discussion without a doubt are Bayern Munich (champion in 2020), Manchester United, which added figures, Juventus, Liverpool,
and if Real Madrid manages to close the arrival of Mbappé
, it will become one of the clearest applicants.
