Draw looms! Meet Sporting's possible Champions League rivals | OneFootball

Sporting are just a few hours away from discovering the path that lies ahead in the new edition of the Champions League. The league phase draw is scheduled for this Thursday in Monaco, starting at 5 p.m., and will determine the Lions’ opponents in a competition that gets underway on September 8. At this point, 27 of the 36 participating teams are already known, with the first two pots completely finalized.

The Lions are in Pot 2, alongside clubs such as Aston Villa, Manchester United, Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Porto, Club Brugge, PSV and Betis. The format dictates that each team faces two opponents from each pot, although Sporting and Porto cannot meet at this stage of the competition. The draw could therefore place some of the biggest clubs in European football in Sporting’s path.

Pot 1 features some huge names, such as PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid. Any of these sides could represent one of the major tests in the Alvalade club’s European campaign, at a stage when the Lions are looking to establish themselves once again among the continent’s elite.

Pot 3 also includes quality opposition. Feyenoord, Lille, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Shakhtar Donetsk, Galatasaray and Slavia Prague are the names already confirmed. In Pot 4, at this stage, Stuttgart, Lens and Como are included, with a few places still to be filled. The remaining participants will be decided in the second legs of the play-offs between Bodo/Glimt and NEC, Viking and Dinamo Zagreb, LASK and Celtic, Lyon and Fenerbahçe, Celje and Slovan Bratislava, AEK and Levski Sofia, and Sabah and Hapoel Be'er Sheva.

. Morten Hjulmand - who found himself in trouble - and Viktor Gyökeres, both with a recent past at Alvalade, could emerge as possible reunions along the way, depending naturally on the draw and the final composition of the pots.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.