CL seedings for the group stage see holders Barcelona among the front-runners, while Borussia Dortmund promise a 'group of death' from their lowly place in Pot 4
The Champions League Group Stage draw will take place at 17:30 CET on Thursday August 25 2011, LIVE right here on Goal.com. Here we discover just who will face whom as Europe's premier club competition gets into full swing ...
How it works
The 32 qualifiers have been divided into four pots based on the Uefa coefficients, which are in turn decided by a mixture of the team's own performance in Europe over the past five seasons, as well as the strength of their country's league.
The Champions League group stage comprises eight pools of four teams: consequently, a team from each pot is drawn and placed into one of the eight groups available. This is done by pot and not "one at a time": that is to say, all the teams from pot one will be placed into a group, and then pot two, and so on down to the fourth and final pot.
There are some restrictions, though. Teams from the same national association cannot be drawn together, and even prior to that there will be two 'sets' of groups decided for the purpose of television rights. For example, the four teams from Spain cannot all be drawn in the same set.
Pots
The Champions League Group Stage pots for 2011-12 are as follows:
Pot 1 Pot 2
Manchester United AC Milan
Barcelona Olympique Lyonnais
Chelsea Shakhtar Donetsk
Bayern Munich Valencia
Arsenal Benfica
Real Madrid Villarreal
Porto CSKA Moscow
Inter Marseille
Pot 3 Pot 4
Zenit St Petersburg Borussia Dortmund
Ajax Napoli
Bayer Leverkusen Dinamo Zagreb
Olympiakos APOEL Nicosia
Manchester City Trabzonspor*
Lille RKC Genk
FC Basel Viktoria Plzen
BATE Borisov Otelul Galati
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