The draw for the league phase of the 2024-25 UEFA Champions League is complete, and after some fun with computers, big UEFA-branded buttons (ably pushed by Cristiano Ronaldo) and a ton of fixtures, let's take a breath and break things down! Which elite teams got an easy draw? How does the pathway look for defending champions Real Madrid? What about Manchester City? And how about Paris Saint-Germain without Kylian Mbappé?
With the opponents known -- and a full schedule of fixtures to follow on Saturday -- ESPN's experts break down the draw for some of the biggest teams as well as their chances of reaching the knockout phase.
Man City's Tough Trip to Paris
Man City have become Champions League experts under Pep Guardiola, but while their league phase draw could have been worse, it also could have been kinder. They avoided Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in Pot 1, but a trip to Paris Saint-Germain -- where they lost in the group stage in 2021 -- represents a tough test, even though manager Luis Enrique can no longer call upon Kylian Mbappe.
Juventus were among the strongest teams in Pot 2 and not only were City paired with them, but they will have to travel to Turin. Throw in an away game at Sporting Lisbon, and Guardiola's team will have to navigate a tricky fixture list on the road.
The upside for City is their home fixtures and it's worth remembering that they haven't lost a Champions League game at the Etihad Stadium since defeat to Lyon in September 2018. Home games against Inter, Club Brugge, Feyenoord and Sparta Prague shouldn't give them many problems, and taking 12 points from those matches should get them within touching distance of a place in the top eight.
Ultimately, that will be Guardiola's first goal; to make sure City get a bye into the last-16 and don't have to bother with a two-legged play-off. If nothing else, Guardiola won't want the hassle of two extra games shoehorned into an already packed campaign.
City last failed to reach the Champions League knock-out rounds in 2012, and they won't expect to break that streak this season. They will have to cash in on a kind home fixture list, but after going 31 European matches unbeaten at the Etihad, they are more than capable of doing so. Trips to PSG and Juventus are the most problematic and might become even more so depending on where they land in the schedule.
Liverpool's Dream Draw
Liverpool's biggest bonus from the draw is that their toughest opponents must travel to Anfield. Spanish champions and reigning Champion League kings Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen, last season's invincible Bundesliga champions, are the big danger to Liverpool, but Arne Slot's side won't have to play them away due to the format of the new competition.
The prize for all of the teams with expectations of winning the Champions League is to finish in the top two of the league stage in order to seal the best path to the final, so Liverpool have every chance of winning all eight games because of the way the fixtures have fallen for them. Remaining home games against Lille and Bologna will not be a worry for Liverpool, while none of their away games -- RB Leipzig, AC Milan, PSV Eindhoven, Girona -- could be classed as daunting fixtures. It could have been a different story had Slot's side been forced to travel to Madrid and Leverkusen.
In many ways, this really is a dream draw for Liverpool and they couldn't have hand-picked their schedule any better.
Where are the potential pitfalls? Real and Leverkusen will still be a challenge at Anfield, despite the home advantage, while AC Milan will be backed by a raucous crowd at San Siro. But let's not try to make this draw sound worse than it is. Liverpool will be delighted with it and they have a real chance of banking enough wins to top the league.
Arsenal's Test of Strength
Arsenal avoided champions Real Madrid as well as the team (Bayern Munich) that knocked them out at the quarterfinal stage in 2023-24, and so Mikel Arteta can be reasonably content with their draw. Facing PSG without Mbappe should be a more palatable proposition, too, although Inter Milan are Serie A title-holders and reached the Champions League Final just two years ago.
Arteta has been keen to add strength in depth in the transfer market -- so he can rotate his team across various competitions without the level of performance dropping too much -- and this fixture list should afford him some breathing space to do that, with favorable-looking home games against Shakhtar, Dinamo Zagreb and AS Monaco. A test of the Gunners' progress under Arteta will come against Sporting, however, given the Portuguese side knocked them out of the Europa League in March 2023 in a two-legged tie that featured an entertaining 2-2 draw in Lisbon. Atalanta finished fourth in last season's Serie A, but won their first European trophy in their history -- and first of any description for 61 years -- by beating the hitherto unbeatable Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 in the Europa League final. The only team to beat them at home in that run was another English team: Liverpool.
Bayern's Homecoming
Overall, Bayern Munich would have surely taken this. While there's no emotional homecoming for Vincent Kompany with Bayern dodging Manchester City, their toughest match will be a trip to Barcelona but apart from that, they'll fancy their chances of winning the rest. PSG and Benfica will offer stern asks at the Allianz Arena, though GNK Dinamo and Slovan Bratislava should be straightforward. Shakhtar Donetsk are playing their home matches in Gelsenkirchen this year, meaning a short trip to the north-west of Germany for Bayern, while they will head to Feyenoord and Aston Villa confident of picking up victories.
PSG and Bayern have enjoyed several battles over the years, with Bayern knocking them out of the tournament at the Round of 16 stage in 2023, while there will also be echoes of Bayern's demolition of Barcelona back in the 2020 quarterfinals when it was Hansi Flick who masterminded their 8-2 victory. Now Flick's in charge of the Catalans and he'll be managing a team still featuring a couple of players like Marc-André ter Stegen and Frenkie de Jong who will have recurring nightmares of that evening.
Barça's Big Test
Barcelona's toughest opponent is Bayern, so they will be happy it's a home fixture at the Olympic Stadium. Bayern have been Barça's bête noire in recent years and the game will bring back memories of the German side's 8-2 win in 2020, when current Barça coach Flick sat in the opposite dugout. That said, Barça may rather have drawn Bayern than a Man City or a PSG because there remains an air of uncertainty around them under new coach Vincent Kompany.
Dortmund away will be awkward, too, but again it's arguably better than a trip to City, PSG or even Liverpool. Overall, though, you imagine Barça will be happy with their selection of fixtures as they look to build on last season's quarterfinal appearance.
Most importantly, it's an opportunity for Flick's young, but talented, team to prove themselves against the continent's top sides. Lamine Yamal, Pedri, Ferran Torres, Fermín López and new signing Dani Olmo were all part of Spain's victorious squad at the European Championships and will take that experience into this season. Pau Cubarsí won Olympic gold, Alejandro Balde is back from injury and Gavi will return in the coming months, with MarcTer Stegen, Jules Koundé, De Jong, Raphinha and Robert Lewandowski all adding experience.
Real Madrid's Big Names
Real Madrid's draw for the league phase is a tough one, but it contains exactly the kind of big, glamorous European names -- Liverpool, AC Milan, Borussia Dortmund -- that Madrid want to be facing on a regular basis. Seven of their eight opponents are from Europe's "Big Five" leagues -- two German teams, two Italians, two French and one English -- with the exception being Austria's Salzburg. That means Mbappé will be heading back to France twice, to play Lille (and his brother) and Brest.
There are some familiar opponents. Madrid beat Dortmund in last season's Champions League final, while they bested Atalanta in this month's UEFA Super Cup, and beat Liverpool to win the tournament in 2018 and 2022. The away trip to Liverpool looks like Madrid's biggest test, but it's one they'll relish, given Anfield's mythic status in Spain.
PSG's Journey to Growth
This is both a tough group for PSG, and a largely unknown one. Tough because they have been drawn with two of the three top teams from Pot 1, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, while also paired with the two best teams of Pot 2 in Arsenal and Atletico Madrid! Their trips to Munich and London will be very interesting while the Parc des Princes will be on fire for the reception of Manchester City, who won in Paris in the semifinal, first leg, in 2021 and also lost there when Leo Messi scored, and Atletico Madrid, who have never faced the Parisians.
Like Atletico, facing Girona, RB Salzburg and Stuttgart will be all new for the French champions. They have never played against them. Going back to Spain to face Atletico and Girona might not be a bad thing, as PSG did well crossing the Pyrenees last season when they defeated Real Sociedad and Barcelona last season.
For this young squad without superstars and without Mbappé for the first time in eight years, this will be a great journey to grow and to improve collectively and individually. But the objective is to reach at least the last eight.
Atletico's Challenge
Atleti have strengthened their squad this summer, with the additions of Julián Álvarez from Manchester City, Chelsea's Conor Gallagher and Barcelona's Clément Lenglet among others, so they will expect to go deep into this season Champions League.
They face a tough run of fixtures away from home, with PSG, Benfica and FC Salzburg all strong on home turf. Sparta Prague's qualifying round win against Malmo in the Czech capital highlighted the atmosphere at the Epet Arena, and they can absolutely pose a threat to Diego Simeone's side. It's not an easy path at home for Atleti, either. Bayer Leverkusen and RB Leipzig will be tough to beat, making it crucial that Simeone's team beat Lille and Slovan Bratislava while avoiding defeat in their other two games in Madrid.
But while this looks a challenging draw for Atleti, nobody should underestimate the durability and character of a team that has continually punched above its weight in the Champions League under Simeone. They have the experience and ability to go to Paris and Lisbon and win their toughest away games, so Atleti will be a live contender all the way through this stage. To make it into the Round of 16 without needing a play-off, Atleti must finish in the top eight and that looks to be a tall order because of the way the draw has played out for them.
Dortmund's Wish Granted
When Borussia Dortmund's manager Nuri Sahin was asked on Thursday which teams he wanted to face in the Champions League, he picked out two of his former sides: Liverpool and Real Madrid. His wishes were answered, as Cristiano Ronaldo and his magic button offered BVB a trip to Real. That'll see Jude Bellingham lining up against his former club once again in what will be a repeat of last year's Champions League final.
Apart from that tricky trip to Madrid, Dortmund will take the draw they've been handed. Barcelona at home will be tough, where they'll need the power of the yellow wall behind them, but they will expect to beat Shakhtar Donetsk, Celtic and Sturm Graz at Signal Iduna Park. On the road, they'll have a short trip to Club Brugge, plus coin-toss matches in Zagreb and Bologna.
Borussia Dortmund are a team in transition under Sahin, with a slew of summer signings and a group trying to find a way to be more dominant in matches. Regardless of which stage they are at in their evolution, this is very manageable set of fixtures for a side that's added Pascal Groß, Waldemar Anton, Maximilian Beier, Yan Couto and Serhou Guirassy in the offseason.
Leverkusen's Anfield Return
This is a tricky set of fixtures for Xabi Alonso's team, and attention is immediately drawn to their trip to Anfield. Xabi Alonso enjoyed five years at Liverpool and was linked to the job at the end of last season after Jurgen Klopp stepped down. But Alonso felt like he had unfinished business at Leverkusen -- much to their delight -- and having conquered Germany, they look to go one better in the Champions League than the class of 2002, who reached the final only to run into a Zinedine Zidane-inspired Real Madrid.
They are still on their remarkable unbeaten run on the domestic front, but it was their 3-0 defeat to Atalanta in the final of the Europa League last term that prevented them from completing an incredible undefeated season -- and a treble. It won't be lost on them that they have drawn both Milan giants in Inter and AC. That said, both will be welcomed to the BayArena while FC Salzburg -- under Klopp's former assistant, Pep Lijnders -- and Sparta Praha will also make the trip to North Rhine-Westphalia. They also have the unenviable task of travelling to Atletico Madrid -- a team that knocked them out of the Champions League in both 2017 and 2015 -- while Feyenoord and Brest also await them on the road.
It remains to be seen if Leverkusen can hold on to their star centre back Jonathan Tah, who has been constantly linked with a move away from the club in the summer with both Bayern Munich and Barcelona linked. The chief concern regarding their progress might be how they manage a bruising season. Battling on both the Champions League front and in the Bundesliga will test the depth and durability of Alonso's squad.
Villa's Grand Return
If you have been away from Europe's biggest competition for over 40 years, you really want to make up for lost time and Villa have certainly done that with their draw. Unai Emery and his players -- not to mention the Villa fans -- have hit the jackpot.
Villa fans who remember the club's 1982 European Cup win against Bayern Munich will be able to take a trip down Memory Lane when they face the Bundesliga giants at Villa Park, while the visit of another European heavyweight in Juventus, who dethroned Villa as European champions in 1983, is another big fixture for the club. And just to add to the sense of Villa returning to the big time with a bang, a home game against Scottish champions Celtic will ensure an-all British clash at Villa Park.
While Villa will relish Champions League nights again, the reality is that they will face an uphill task to reach the Round of 16 stage. Bayern and Juventus will be tough obstacles to overcome and every away game will be a challenge, but with only eight teams dropping out of the competition, Villa might just be able to scrape into the play-off stage. It won't be easy.
