Thursday's Champions League draw in Monaco is happening against the backdrop of a full-blown governance war — UEFA's 55 member federations meeting two hours before the ceremony to formally bury the hatchet on FIFA president Gianni Infantino's secretive scheme to sell World Cup profit stakes to private investors. The draw is the main event, but the politics might be the real story.
Infantino won't be there. He used to host this very draw when he ran UEFA's operations. Now UEFA has publicly declared it has no confidence in his leadership, and his reelection campaign in March is looking shakier by the week.
Who fills the power vacuum matters for football's future
The name getting mentioned most often as a potential Infantino successor is Nasser al-Khelaïfi — PSG's president, ECA chairman, and a man who will have a front-row seat at Thursday's ceremony as his club sits in Pot 1 as reigning Champions League holders. He hasn't declared any interest in running for FIFA president. He doesn't need to yet.
On the pitch, the draw will allocate eight opponents to each of the 36 teams — four home, four away — pulled from four seeded pots. No domestic clashes. The league phase runs September through January, with the top eight advancing straight to the last 16. Teams finishing ninth to 24th enter knockout playoffs in February. Below 25th, you're out.
Prize money across the 36 clubs: around €2.5 billion. The stakes, financial and otherwise, are not small.
Four debutants, one genuinely brilliant origin story
Four clubs enter European football's top table for the first time: Como (Italy, coached by Cesc Fàbregas), LASK (Austria), Viking (Norway), and Sabah (Azerbaijan) — a club that didn't exist until 2017.
Sabah's coach Valdas Dambrauskas used his winnings from Lithuania's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to fund a coaching education trip to England. That's not a metaphor for anything — it's just a genuinely odd and entertaining path to the Champions League.
There's also history being made quietly: Yaya Touré guided Slovan Bratislava through their qualifying playoff, becoming the first African coach to take a team into the Champions League main phase. For a competition that's long been criticised for its lack of diversity in the dugout, that's a meaningful first.
The full seedings heading into Thursday's draw:
- Pot 1: PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid
- Pot 2: Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Sporting Lisbon, Aston Villa, Porto, Manchester United, Club Brugge, Real Betis, PSV Eindhoven
- Pot 3: Feyenoord, Lille, Napoli, Leipzig, Villarreal, Fenerbahce, Shakhtar Donetsk, Galatasaray
- Pot 4: Slavia Prague, Slovan Bratislava, Stuttgart, AEK Athens, LASK, Como, Lens, Viking, Sabah
Real Madrid, hunting a 16th European title, and Arsenal, back as finalists after decades in the wilderness, are the two teams that will draw the most attention from the draw bracket. The Gunners' odds of going deep will shift considerably depending on which Pot 2 and Pot 3 teams land in their section — a draw against Dortmund and Galatasaray looks very different to Aston Villa and Feyenoord.
The draw starts at 6 p.m. local time in Monaco. The football conversation will be loud. The political one, happening two hours earlier, could end up being louder.
