The UEFA Champions League knockout phase playoff draw is taking place on Friday at 6 a.m. ET. The teams that finish the league phase between ninth and 16th will be seeded for the first draw of the knockout phase and will face a team placed 17th to 24th. The seeded team will play the return leg at home. The eight winning teams will join the top eight sides of the league phase, who have already qualified for the Round of 16. It’s a more complicated process than in past years, but the bottom line is that on Friday the teams playing in the playoff for the knockout stages find out their opponents.
From now on, the tournament is a bracket. Potential opponents are also pre-defined by pairings of teams’ final league positions. For example, teams finishing ninth and tenth will face the sides that ended 23rd or 24th; teams finishing 11th or 12th will be drawn against either the 21st or 22nd-placed sides and so on.
The first legs of the play-off will take place on February 11-12 while the second leg will take place one week after, on February 18-19. Take a look at the teams involved in the draw:
Seeded teams
9. Atalanta
10. Borussia Dortmund
11. Real Madrid
12. Bayern Munich
13. AC Milan
14. PSV
15. PSG
16. Benfica
Unseeded teams
17. AS Monaco
18. Brest
19. Feyenoord
20. Juventus
21. Celtic
22. Manchester City
23. Sporting CP
24. Club Brugge
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