The Daily Bee (August 24th, 2017): Champions League draw

• Champions League

Today is finally the day we’ll get to know our opponents of this years Champions League campaign. The final playoff games have been played, and now it’s time for the draw that will take play at 18.00h CET.

The playoffs gave us virtually no surprises. The big teams like Napoli, Celtic, Sporting and also Liverpool qualified rather easily for the group stage. The fourth German participant, TSG Hoffenheim lost to Liverpool (1-2, 4-2) in both legs and is now in the Europa League. This has actually positive consequences for Dortmund because the CL TV-money will now be divided by three (BVB, Bayern, Leipzig) instead of four, which obviously means more guaranteed money for Dortmund.

Let’s get to the draw, here are the pots:

So let’s take a look at the worst and best possible draw for Dortmund.

The worst draws looks probably like this: Real Madrid, BVB, Tottenham, Sporting

Real are currently the best team in the world, BVB’s recent track record against the Los Blancos is surprisingly good but it would probably be best to avoid them for now. In addition, we have played Real so often in recent CL-campaigns that the duel is a bit boring by now. BVB from pot 2 obviously and I have to add that it might be a blessing in disguise to be in pot 2 because that one has actually a lot more quality teams than pot 1. The worst opponent from pot 3 is a bit of a toss up, Tottenham, Liverpool, Napoli and Roma are all quality sides. Dortmund should be able to beat them but they can be tricky and you just can’t make mistakes in the group stage. Since we can’t get Leipzig from pot 4, Sporting is probably the best team, however BVB will have to beat whatever team they get from this pot twice.

The best draw: Shakhtar Donetsk, BVB, Anderlecht, NK Maribor

No disrespect, but this would just be perfect. Donetsk is simply the least talented team in pot 1. In pot 3 Anderlecht is my choice because it would also be a very easy trip for the team instead of going to Istanbul for example. I chose Maribor for the same reason over Qarabag.

Daily Buzz: What do you think? Which opponents would you like to see in our group and which teams would like to avoid?

In addition here’s the traditional UCL group stage simulator. Try it out!

I got Monaco, BVB, Tottenham, Maribor