Manchester City will soon find out who they will come up against in the group stage of this season's UEFA Champions League.
The draw for the group stage of the 2022/23 Champions League will take place on Thursday 25th August at 5pm UK time in Istanbul, Turkey, where this year's final will take place at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium. BT Sport will broadcast the draw on TV and on their YouTube channel.
Pep Guardiola's side will be once again be looking to win the competition for the first time in the club's history after coming close in both of their last two attempts.
Last season City suffered a gut-wrenching semi-final exit in a thrilling tie with Real Madrid, losing 6-5 on aggregate despite winning the first leg 4-3 at the Etihad Stadium. The year before the Blues reached the final for the first time, but lost 1-0 to Chelsea in Porto.
How does the draw work?
The group stage sees 32 teams divided into eight groups of four, with teams playing each side in their group twice - once at home and once away.
Before the draw the 32 teams will be placed in one of four pots, and each group will be drawn with one team from each pot. Teams in the same pot and teams from the same country cannot be drawn into the same group.
Group winners and runner's up progress to the Round of 16. Third place finisher's will drop into the Europa League play-off round, where they will face Europa League group runners-up for places in the last 16 of that competition.
Who could City face?
City are in Pot 1, the pot reserved for the reigning Champions League and Europa League winners (Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt) and the champions of six major European leagues. That means they will not face any of Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Porto or Ajax.
The other pots are determined by UEFA Club Coefficient rankings. Pot 2 has already been determined but Pot 3 and Pot 4 will be finalised after the conclusion of play-off ties on the 23rd and 24th August.
As it stands the pots are as follows:
Pot 1: Real Madrid, Eintracht Frankfurt, Man City, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Porto, Ajax.
Pot 2: Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, RB Leipzig.
Pot 3: Borussia Dortmund, Salzburg, Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan, Napoli, Sporting Lisbon, Bayer Leverkusen, Benfica.
Pot 4: Club Brugge, Celtic, Marseille, Viktoria Plzen, Maccabi Haifa plus three more winners from the play-off round..
When are the matches?
The mid-season World Cup means that the Champions League group stage schedule will be condensed into an eight-week period this season.
Matchday 1: 6/7 September
Matchday 2: 13/14 September
Matchday 3: 4/5 October
Matchday 4: 11/12 October
Matchday 5: 25/26 October
Matchday 6: 1/2 November
The draw for the Round of 16 will take place on 7th November.
Keep an eye on the Manchester Evening News' City coverage for updates on the draw.
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