BERLIN (DPA)
Record and reigning winners Real Madrid will have a replay of last season's final against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League new league phase.
Italy great Gianluigi Buffon and football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo led the draw as the tournament will premier a new format this season.
Besides Dortmund, Madrid will face Liverpool, AC Milan, Atalanta, Red Bull Salzburg, Lille, VfB Stuttgart and Brest. The Germans, meanwhile, will also host Barcelona.
There will be a clash of giants already in the first phase as six-time champions Bayern Munich will visit Barcelona, with former Bayern coach and 2019-2020 winner Hansi Flick now at the Spanish club.
Bayern's other opponents include Paris Saint-Germain, Benfica and Aston Villa. Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen will have tough challenges at
Liverpool and Atletico Madrid, while Pep Guardiola and his Manchester City team will host Inter Milan while visiting PSG and Juventus. The order of fixtures is to be announced on Saturday.
The new format
The number of teams competing at the tournament was increased from 32 to 36 and the long-established group stage format, featuring eight pools of four teams, has been scrapped.
Now, the 36 clubs will compete in a single league phase and be ranked together. Each team will play eight matches - four at home, four away - against two opponents from each of the four seeding pots.
The top eight teams automatically qualify for the last 16. The teams that finish between ninth and 16th will be seeded in a new knock-out phase play-off draw, meaning they will face a team placed 17th to 24th.
The eight clubs which prevail in the play-offs will then progress to the round of 16, where they will each face one of the top-eight finishers, who will be seeded. Teams eliminated from the Champions League don't drop down to the Europa League any more.
From the round of 16 onwards, the competition will continue to follow its existing format. The same format will be used in the Europa League, with the
Conference League the same too, except teams will only play six initial matches instead of eight.