The usual rules apply – teams from the same country cannot be drawn together, and the draw has blatantly been fixed to favour that lot. It gives me a decent amount of pleasure to report that, despite those restrictions, there’s still plenty of scope for a group of death or two.
Pot 1 Chelsea, Villarreal, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Sporting CP, Lille.
Pot 2 Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Manchester United, Paris Saint-Germain, Liverpool, Sevilla, Borussia Dortmund.
Pot 3 Porto, Ajax, Shakhtar Donetsk, Leipzig, Salzburg, Benfica, Atalanta, Zenit.
Pot 4 Besiktas, Dynamo Kyiv, Club Brugge, Young Boys, AC Milan, Malmo, Wolfsburg, Sheriff Tiraspol.
In case you’re wondering why there are so many heavyweights in Pot B, it’s because they won bugger all of note last season. Pot A is made up of the two European trophy winners, Chelsea and Villarreal, plus the champions of the six leagues with the highest coefficient.