Champions League holders Real Madrid will have rematches of the final from its past three Champions League title wins, against Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, in its eight-game schedule in the new-look format of European football’s signature event.
Real Madrid has added France superstar Kylian Mbappe 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. Real Madrid will host Dortmund and travel to Liverpool, though the match dates won’t be 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 Real 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 gave eight-team slates of opponents for all 36 teams in the bigger and more lucrative Champions League.
The traditional 32-team group stage played each season since 2003 was abolished 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.
Bayern Munich 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 Atletico Madrid.
The new-style draw was made at a gala ceremony in a beach-side concert hall in Monaco with soccer greats Cristiano 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 of Champions League was created by UEFA under pressure from influential clubs who wanted more guaranteed games and a wider variety of high-profile opponents.
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.
The 36 teams will share a UEFA prize money fund of at least 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion), a raise of 25% on last season.
