Champions League: group stage draw – live!

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• Pot 1: Real Madrid, Eintracht Frankfurt, Manchester City, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint Germain, Porto, Ajax

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• Pot 2: Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, RB Leipzig, Tottenham

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• Pot 3: Borussia Dortmund, Salzburg, Shakhtar Donetsk, Internazionale, Napoli, Benfica, Sporting Lisbon, Bayer Leverkusen

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• Pot 4: Rangers, Marseille, Copenhagen, Bruges, Celtic, Viktoria Plzen, Maccabi Haifa, Dinamo Zagreb

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… and the usual rules apply. Teams from Pot 1 will be drawn into Groups A to H, then teams from the next three Pots in turn are plucked from the bowls of destiny. When a team from Pots 2, 3 and 4 are picked, a computer immediately dumps them into the first available group, taking restrictions into account. Those being: two teams from the same country can’t face each other, while certain pairings from the same country must play on different nights for TV purposes. Don’t ask, life’s too short, that’s why the computer’s going to deal with it.

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The draw is scheduled to begin at 7pm in Istanbul, which is 5pm BST. It won’t, of course, there will be a spirit-sapping amount of pomp, pish, faff and filler before anyone deigns to get down to business. But as soon as those damn balls are plucked, pulled apart, the paper within them unspooled, the names on the paper read out, and the teams assigned to groups, you’ll be the first to know. It’s on!

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