Draw starts at 5pm BST (6pm CET)
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Hello all and welcome to live coverage of the league phase draw for this season’s Champions League. The 36 teams – 36! – will discover their various opponents, home and away and there are sure to be some mouthwatering ties thrown up.
It’ll be the third edition of the Champions League in the One Big Group format, which seemed unwieldy and bloated at first but has been … OK? The final matchday has brought a good amount of drama for the teams scrambling for 24th, which is something. Though the importance of finishing in the top eight is somewhat undercut by the fact that Paris Saint-Germain have won both tournaments since the advent of this format having finished 15th and 11th in the league phase.
Uefa is preparing to make a criminal complaint against Gianni Infantino for alleged “criminal mismanagement” in connection with his failed Fifa Forward Enterprise plan and has applied for the release of documents related to its conception.
In an explosive escalation of the war engulfing football’s governing bodies, Uefa has made separate applications in the United States for information, including from Fifa.
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