Champions League: last 16 draw – live!

The draw will be led by Giorgio Marchetti, Uefa’s deputy general secretary and drawmaster in chief, who has just taken the stage.

We start with a rousing and dramatically-soundtracked group stage highlights package.

The view from the hall. It’s probably better on TV:

Lots of empty seats in the hall still, but then I suppose there are only 16 teams involved. Anyway, action!

The draw starts in 90 seconds!

Schalke are the bookies’ outsiders for the competition, which given that they are the only team that will absolutely certainly get a nightmare draw is probably understandable. Manchester City are the favourites, with three-time defending champions Real Madrid seventh. Here’s the chaps from WhoScored predicting how every team will do:

“Looking at the potential match ups every English team other than city can focus on the EPL after March,” says Krish.

Here’s a team-by-team analysis from last week:

Over on Uefa, they have managed to ask dozens of famous players at Champions League clubs about the draw, and elicited almost identical responses from all of them. Thus Mario Gotze says:

Regardless of which opponent you get in the Champions League last 16, it will be tense and very, very tough.

While Koke says:

Whoever we’re drawn against, we’re going to have to play very well.

And Leon Goretzka says:

You come up against good opposition in every game so we’ll see who we get.

Here’s an English-team can-get-ometer, just so everybody knows where they stand:

Manchester City
Can’t play: Lyon, Liverpool, Manchester Utd, Tottenham
Can play: Ajax, Atlético Madrid, Roma, Schalke

Tottenham Hotspur
Can’t play: Barcelona, Manchester City
Can play: Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Paris St-Germain, Porto, Real Madrid

Liverpool
Can’t play: PSG, Man City
Can play: Barcelona, Bayern, Borussia, Juventus, Porto, Real Madrid

Manchester United
Can’t play: Juventus, Man City
Can play: Barcelona, Bayern, Borussia, PSG, Porto, Real Madrid

Today we will mainly be thinking about Article 18 of the 2018-19 Champions League regulations, in which paragraph one sets out the basic rules for this draw as follows:

18.01 The round of 16 pairings are determined by means of a draw in accordance with the following principles:

a. Clubs from the same association cannot be drawn against each other.

b. Group winners must be drawn against runners-up from a different group.

c. The runners-up play the first leg at home (on 12/13 February and 19/20 February), and then the second leg away (on 5/6 and 12/13 March).

And, just for interest:

18.02 The eight winners of the round of 16 contest the quarter-finals. The quarter-final pairings are determined by means of a draw.

Date for the diary: this draw will be held on 15 March

So what this means is that Manchester City, who came top of Group F, can’t be drawn against Lyon, the runners-up in that group, or against Tottenham, Liverpool or Manchester United, who were runners-up in different groups but are from the same association, and so can only play one of Atlético Madrid, Schalke, Ajax or Roma. They have the fewest potential opponents with four, with Atlético next on that list with five. Only two teams have the full house of seven potential quarter-final pairs, with only the other qualified team from their own group ruled out, and they are Porto and Ajax.

Even before the draw poor Schalke know they are going to get royally skewered: having come second in Group D they can’t play the winners of that group – Porto – while the other German sides, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich, are also ruled out. Thus they know that one of Barcelona, PSG, Manchester City, Real Madrid or Juventus will be their opponents. SAD!

The draw is due to start at 11am GMT/12pm CET. It will feature literally hundreds of balls in 16 separate bowls, because when Uefa holds a draw they like to go all in. So strap yourselves in, and brace yourselves for an hour and a bit of ball-picking goodness.