Photo: The Canadian Press
MONACO (AP) — The Champions League will have a series of rematches of recent finals in the bigger slate of games paired Thursday in the new format of European soccer’s signature competition.
Real Madrid will have re-runs of its past three Champions League title wins, against Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, in a revamped eight-game schedule for each team now the traditional group stage is abolished.
Madrid has added France superstar Kylian Mbappé to its stellar team since beating Dortmund in last season’s final. It also beat Liverpool in the 2022 and 2018 finals among its record 15 European titles.
Madrid will host Dortmund and travel to Liverpool, though the match dates are not confirmed until Saturday.
Manchester City also gets a Champions League final reunion — hosting Inter Milan which it beat to win its European title in 2023.
Bayern Munich will host Paris Saint-Germain in a rematch of the 2020 final that the German giant won 1-0.
Defending champion Madrid’s slate of opponents also include home games against seven-time European champion AC Milan, Salzburg and Stuttgart with trips to Atalanta — the Europa League winner that Madrid beat in the UEFA Super Cup this month — and twice to France, to play Lille and debutant Brest.
A complex draw ceremony in Monaco aided on stage by Cristiano Ronaldo gave eight-team slates of opponents for all 36 teams in the bigger and more lucrative Champions League, that has a prize money fund of at least 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion).
The traditional 32-team group stage played each season since 2003 was scrapped in favor of a single-standings league. Now, 36 teams each will play eight games against eight different opponents through January.
The top eight in the standings in January go direct to the round of 16 in March. Teams ranked ninth to 24th go into the knockout playoffs in February. The bottom 12 teams are eliminated.
Man City's away games at PSG and Juventus were balanced by one of the easier slates of home games: against Club Brugge, Feyenoord and Sparta Prague.
The English champion also must travel to Slovan Bratislava, one of the lowest-ranked teams, which meant avoiding Girona, its Spanish sibling in an Abu Dhabi-backed global network of clubs. Man City is the flagship club and its owners had to put their Girona shares into a blind trust to comply with UEFA integrity rules.
Bayern also will host Barcelona, which it routed 8-2 in the quarterfinals of the 2020 title run, and travel to Aston Villa, the surprise winner of their 1982 European Cup final.
Liverpool will host Bayer Leverkusen, the German champion coached by its former star midfielder Xabi Alonso, in a standout match of the expanded league phase.
Leverkusen will host city rivals Inter Milan and AC Milan, and also travel to Atlético Madrid.
The new-style draw was made at a gala ceremony in a beach-side concert hall in Monaco with soccer greats Ronaldo and Gianluigi Buffon.
After each team’s ball was picked by Buffon from one of four bowls — seeded according to results in the past five years of European club competitions — Ronaldo theatrically pressed a button for the reveal of how a software program allocated two opponents from each of the four seeding pots.
The new format was created by UEFA under pressure from influential clubs who wanted more guaranteed games and a wider variety of high-profile opponents, believing the old group stage was predictable and lacked drama. The later knockout stages have typically involved only wealthy clubs from the richest domestic leagues.
“If you see the number of competitive matches in this format, unbelievable. It’s amazing,” PSG president Nasser al-Khelaïfi said. "That’s what everybody wanted to change.”
Al-Khelaïfi leads the influential European Club Association which negotiated the new format with UEFA. They also manage the competition's commercial strategy in a joint venture.
The new league phase will have 144 total games compared to 96 in the group stage last season. By also adding a new knockout playoffs round in February, the competition overall has 189 games instead of 125.
This Champions League edition already was given a fresh look by unexpected entries from each of the big-five domestic leagues, which all were among the lowest-ranked seeds.
Villa returns for the first time since its European Cup title defense in 1983 was ended by Juventus, which it will host again.
Bologna last qualified in 1964, Stuttgart is back after a 14-year gap, while Girona and Brest will make their European competition debuts. Brest will host defending champion Madrid and Leverkusen in a borrowed stadium in nearby Breton town Guingamp because its 102-year-old home ground is outdated.
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