Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and more lie in wait for English sides
Thursday 29 August 2019 17:54, UK
Four English teams will be in the draw for the Champions League group stages. Who could they face and when is it held?
The annual draw for the group stages, which can play a major part in a club's fortunes in Europe, will take place this week after the last remaining play-off round ties are decided on Wednesday.
So what can the four English teams, Manchester City, holders Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham expect?
This season's group-stage draw will be held in its usual location of the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on Thursday at 5pm BST.
There will be live coverage of the draw on Sky Sports News with a special hour-long programme, including former players from all four of the English clubs in the group stages.
We will also be live blogging the draw, bringing you all the news as it happens on skysports.com and our app.
There are four teams in each group, one from each 'pot', which theoretically stops the strongest teams from knocking one another out too early.
The top pot, Pot 1, includes last season's Champions League winners Liverpool and Europa League winners Chelsea, as well as Manchester City and the rest of the domestic champions from the top-six performing leagues across Europe.
The rest of the pots, 2-4, are decided in rank order of the remaining 24 clubs' European co-efficient - which is a calculation of their performance in the Champions League and Europa League over the last five years.
No two teams from the same association can be drawn together at this stage - so there will be no English derbies just yet.
The six league champions - Man City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Zenit St Petersburg, and Paris Saint-Germain - will all be seeded top of their respective groups, along with Liverpool and Chelsea.
Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Tottenham are both in Pot 2; Antonio Conte's Inter Milan will be in Pot 3 and could be drawn against his former club Chelsea; while teams with limited recent success in European competitions, like Galatasaray, Atalanta and Lille, will be in the final pot, Pot 4.
Pot 1: Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Zenit St Petersburg, Paris Saint-Germain.
Pot 2: Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli, Shakhtar, Tottenham, Benfica, Ajax
Pot 3: Lyon, Bayer Leverkusen, RB Salzburg, Valencia, Inter, Dinamo Zagreb, Olympiakos, Brugge
Pot 4: Lokomotiv Moscow, Genk, Galatasaray, RB Leipzig, Prague, Atalanta, Lille, Red Star Belgrade.
The group stages get underway in the week of September 16, with six group games running through to mid-December.
Whoever is lucky enough to go all the way will go head to head at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul - where Liverpool beat AC Milan back in 2005 - on May 30.
