After a 20-year-long wait, Newcastle have confirmed their place in the Champions League and will be included in pot four when the draw is made on August 31.
As we have been placed in the lowest pot, we could well be in for a very difficult group but with some exciting ties nonetheless – drawing Barcelona, Bayern Munich and AC Milan is a possibility and arguably the toughest group!
At the other end of the scale, we could also draw a group of Feyenoord, Porto and Crvena Zvezda which may give us the best opportunity of progressing – although there are no easy games in the Champions League.
Here’s the four pots as things stand, based on those already in and the clubs projected to qualify:
Pot One: Manchester City, Sevilla or Roma, Barcelona, Napoli, Borussia Dortmund, Paris St Germain, Benfica, Feyenoord
Pot Two: Real Madrid, Manchester United, Atletico Madrid, Bayern Munich, Porto, RB Leipzig, Arsenal, Inter Milan
Pot Three: Lazio, Shakhtar Donetsk, AC Milan, RB Salzburg, Dinamo Zagreb, Rangers, Braga, Crvena Zvezda.
Pot Four: Newcastle United, Celtic, Real Sociedad, RC Lens, Union Berlin, Galatasaray, Young Boys, FC Copenhagen.
Regardless, it will make little difference to Toon supporters excited to be back in Europe. Seeing Dan Burn, Jacob Murphy and Sean Longstaff playing at the Nou Camp is a crazy yet entirely real prospect!
It’s set to be an exciting summer and we’re already counting down until the end of August to discover who we will face with the first game set to be played on September 19-20.
Below are the current projected pots with teams in bold confirmed and teams in italics projected to confirm:
There is part of me that would love Barca, Real Madrid & AC Milan from those groups – why not have Europes elite to SJP and think of the away days our fans would have after such a long wait.
Sharpy17(Quote)