Another year, another bafflingly long Champions League draw awaits us on Thursday, with tons of needless breaks guaranteed before the actually important act of picking balls out of pots begins.
The 2022/23 UEFA Champions League group stage draw takes place in Istanbul on Thursday and will begin at 5 PM UK time. As noted by UEFA's official website: "The draw will feature 26 automatic qualifiers and six play-off round winners whose identity will be confirmed on 23 and 24 August."
But the Chelsea team at football.london did not want to wait before trying our hand at simulating a potential draw that awaits Thomas Tuchel.
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We used a high-tech supercomputer to predict the draw (which you can use too at home). This draw took less than five minutes and was more enjoyable than the real thing.
Before we reveal who Chelsea were drawn against, let's break down the Pots.
Pot 1: Real Madrid, Frankfurt, Manchester City, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, PSG, Porto and Ajax.
Pot 2: Liverpool, Chelsea, Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, RB Leipzig and Tottenham.
Pot 3: Borussia Dortmund, RB Salzburg, Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan, Napoli, Benfica, Sporting CP and Bayer Leverkusen.
Pot 4: Rangers/Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb/Bodo/Glimt, Trabzonspor/Copenhagen, Club Brugge, Cletic, Viktoria Plzen and Maccabi Haifa*
*The computer seems to have already predicted who will progress in Wednesday's final qualifiers, apologies to those offended.
So from that complex preparation on my laptop, we can now reveal our simulated Champions League group stage draw for the 2022/23 season!
Focusing just on Chelsea, one name jumps out instantly in the form of Inter Milan and the predictable return of Romelu Lukaku.
And like in 2014 with Thibaut Courtois, UEFA has no regulation preventing a loan player from being used against his parent club in the Champions League as there is in the Premier League.
xNarrative is very high here, particularly with the reception Lukaku, still a Chelsea player, would get on a return to Stamford Bridge.
There could also be the potential of Trevoh Chalobah going there on loan also before deadline day, with the Serie A club interested and the player concerned over his playing time.
Chelsea would again avoid any big hitters from Pot A drawing Europa League winners Frankfurt. The two teams last met in the Europa League semi-final in 2019 under Maurizio Sarri, with the Blues winning on penalties.
It would be a first meeting with Israeli club Maccabi Haifa who qualified for the competition for the very first time on Tuesday night, beating Serbian outfit Crvena Zvezda.
Other notable pairings in our draw see Bayern face Barcelona for the second year running, with Robert Lewandowski against his old club. PSG, Atletico Madrid and Dortmund are all in a group of death with Celtic. Real Madrid once again gets Shakhtar, who I swear they are contractually obliged to face every year.
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