Liverpool may be having some troubles in the Premier League right now, but their passage to the Champions League knockout stages was a formality.
Despite an opening match day pasting at the hands of Napoli, the Reds went on to secure five consecutive wins that have seen Jurgen Klopp's side make a comfortable passage into the last-16, finishing second behind the Italians on head-to-head record.
There may now only be 16 clubs left in this season's competition, but in the first knockout stage Liverpool can only face four of them. That's because a club that finished second in their group is unseeded and can therefore only face seeded teams that finished first. Liverpool also cannot face seeded Napoli, because they were in their own group, while they can't be drawn against another team from England, which rules out Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester City.
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As a result of the above rules, the only four clubs that can be drawn against the Anfield giants are Porto, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Benfica. But the chances of Liverpool playing any of the quartet are also not equal. That's because, like Liverpool, Bayern Munich can only face one of four clubs after fellow Bundesliga sides Eintracht Frankfurt, RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund all finished second in their own groups.
A Reddit user has created a handy table on the social media platform that shows the probability of each possible last-16 draw materialising. As a result of the competition draw rules, Liverpool has a higher probability of being drawn against Bayern Munich (37.12%) than any other team.
In the table, Real Madrid is declared the second most likely opponent, with a probability of 21.28%, while Porto and Benfica are both tied third on 20.80%.
The Reds are no strangers to any of the clubs that they could be drawn against. Klopp's sided faced Porto in the group stages last season, before beating Benfica over two legs in the quarter-finals and eventually losing 1-0 to Real Madrid at the final in Paris.
Liverpool also faced Bayern in the round of 16 back in 2019 when Sadio Mane - who now plays for the Germans - helped the Reds to defeat their Bundesliga opponents before going on to lift their sixth European Cup in Madrid.
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