
Originally Posted by
Insidious
It's a draw, but the draw is seeded based on table finishes, so not entirely random.
Just to cover all of it as best I understand it (and if I've made errors feel free to correct/tweak - open to all) we'll have -
- Clubs finishing in the top 8 of the League phase (36 teams) progressed directly to the last-16 knockout phase. This of course applies to us as we topped the League phase.
- Teams finishing in the bottom 8 get eliminated.
- The 16 "in-between" sides if you like (9th to 24th) progress to a play-off phase.
- From those 16, the clubs that finished 9th-16th are seeded, creating 4 pairs for the play-off draw.
- Sides finishing 17th-24th placed into four unseeded pairs.
- Those unseeded teams (17th-24th) are each drawn against one of two of the seeded teams.
- Seeded teams get to host the second leg of the play-off matches as a reward for finishing higher in the initial League phase.
- Man City finished 22nd in the League table, so were always going to be drawn against a side that finishes 11th or 12th - in this case Real Madrid who finished 11th.
- There will be a draw on the 21st of February, after we know who won the play-off ties.
- Certain components of the last-16 draw are already decided, which is down to teams in the top 8 (of the League phase) having been split into 4 seeded pairs based on their finish in the League phase.
- Teams in seeded pairs will face the winners of one of the two play-off ties they have already been signed off with, if you will.
- We Liverpool finished top of the League phase and thus are "paired" with Barcelona because they finished in 2nd spot. So ourselves and Barca are the ones that will play either the winner of Brest v PSG or the Monaco v Benfica tie.
- Arsenal (3rd) paired with Inter (4th) so they'll play winners of Juventus v PSV Eindhoven or Feyenoord v AC Milan - info we will know on February 21st.
.....and so on. It's a bit convoluted to say the least! I'd love to see the "old" system but remove the seeding aspect in group phases so that (actual) Group of Death situations happened rather than difficult groups that favoured the giants of the game - random draws would have meant you could see Real, Bayern, Barcelona and Man City in one group for example, which could potentially open the occasional door for French sides not named PSG, the Dutch sides etc
Hope this helps, but it's a messy format in some ways and I'm sure someone will understand it better than me, so apologies if it didn't.
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