Rant Box: Champions League Draw

By: Jamie | August 24th, 2011

The season gets more exciting tomorrow as the draw for the group stages of the Champions League takes place in Monte Carlo.

Just a reminder of how it works – there are four pots. Chelsea are in the first pot. We get a team from each of the other pots. No one can draw a team from the same league. But Manchester City could draw Barcelona or Real Madrid, which would be interesting. We also currently can’t draw AVB’s former team Porto.

The pots:

Pot 1: Manchester United, Barcelona, Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Real Madrid, Porto, Inter Milan

Pot 2: AC Milan, Lyon, Shakhtar Donetsk, Valencia, Benfica, Villarreal, CSKA Moscow, Marseille

Pot 3: Zenit St Petersburg, Ajax, Bayer Leverkusen, Olympiakos, Manchester City, Lille, Basel, BATE Borisov

Pot 4: Borussia Dortmund, Napoli, Dynamo Zagreb, APOEL Nicosia, Genk, FC Viktoria Plzen, Otelul Galati, Trabzonspor

FSC and Setanta will be covering the draw from 11:30/11:45am EST. There will likely be half an hour or more of faffing about before the actual draw takes place.

Any hopes on who we draw? Who we want to avoid? Any of our traveling fans have a preferred destination to incorporate a nice vacation along with a European away match? Sound off here before and during the draw, and I shall return once we have our opponents in the group stage.

Some Related Chelsea Posts:

Category: Champions League, Chelsea Team News, Rant Box

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Maysam

I personally stopped watching all international games after world cup 2002 (korea disgrace), I planned to stop watcihng CL after Chelsea vs Barcelona (Frisk disgrace) but CL is too good not to watch.
well I was right about us getting Valencia
Mateo

Playing Valencia....aint that a coincidence? hope mata knows their weaknesses
Jamie

I'd love for us to get Leverkusen and get Ballack back at the Bridge.
Jonathan Moss

Valencia/Villareal + Basel/BATE + Anybody but Dortmund
Maysam

People call me crazy, but I beleive all these draws are fixed. They put teams together to increase sell of TV rights. If I am right
Chelsea would be in the same group as Benfica or Valencia
Manchester City will be in the same group as Arsenal or Inter Milan
Drierflier

I believe you are right. We cant play Arsenal of course, but if anyone does a quick look at the draws over previous years you will see a disproportionately high number of top teams pitted against each other. More than chance, statistically speaking. Of course they also ensure that two or more top teams get an easy-ish passage, otherwise the later stages would lose revenue.
Am I paranoid? Possibly. Is the organisation highly suspect at the top? Yes, it is generally acknowledged that it is. Is its PR machine suspect, or dancing to the tune that the bosses play? Yes, certainly. Has there been a great loss of faith in those that run football at such a high level. Definitely. Could they orchestrate such deception? Easily.
Chelsung

your craziness.. How come Mancity get Arsenal as they r from same league?
Wayne

different pots
Jack

You're not crazy. You're right.
Ryan

I'm not a Chelsea fan, but I think it would be interesting to see Chelsea up against Benfica. Porto dominated them last season, so Boas can put on a nice display there. This year will be good, with lots of powerful teams in the lower pots like Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City, and AC Milan.