Champions League 2026/27 Preview: The contenders, the chaos and Sir Jim's thousand yard stare
Jack Fairman, YSW Chief Football Editor
The Champions League is back.
Or, more accurately, the Champions League draw is complete, which means 36 clubs now know the identities of eight teams they will play at some point between September and January, but not necessarily when.
Welcome to European football in 2026.
There was a time when the draw involved a few plastic balls, some of them warm, allegedly, but that's none of my business, several former footballers struggling to unscrew them and a UEFA official explaining why Manchester United couldn't possibly play somebody because PSV Eindhoven had already been placed in Group D.
It wasn't perfect.
But you could follow it.
Now a human draws a ball, a computer instantly selects eight opponents according to an enormous collection of parameters, everybody looks at a giant screen and nods sagely, with the expression of someone pretending they've understood a quantum mechanics lecture.
We simply have to trust that somewhere inside the machine nobody has accidentally left Football Manager running.
Still, after Thursday's festivities in Monaco, we have our Champions League.
And, irritatingly, it looks rather good.
Five Premier League clubs are involved this season. Arsenal return having come agonisingly close last year. Liverpool begin a European adventure under Andoni Iraola. Manchester City are navigating life after Guardiola. Manchester United are finally back at Europe's top table and Aston Villa arrive as Europa League winners with Unai Emery presumably already watching tactical footage of Slavia Prague's reserve left back.
Elsewhere, Paris Saint Germain remain the standard everyone is trying to reach, Real Madrid remain Real Madrid and Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Inter and the rest of Europe's aristocracy have all turned up again.
There are also a few gatecrashers.
We'll come to them.
First, the English.
Arsenal: This Time They Really Can Win It
Real Madrid at home.
Bayern Munich away.
Borussia Dortmund at home.
Napoli away.
Read those four fixtures quickly enough and it looks as though UEFA's computer has developed a personal dislike of Mikel Arteta.
Then you notice Lille and Sabah are coming to the Emirates, with trips to Real Betis and Slavia Prague completing the schedule, and the blood pressure returns to something approaching normal.
The names are frightening.
The draw really isn't.
More importantly, Arsenal should no longer be approaching the Champions League wondering whether they belong among Europe's elite.
They do.
Last season answered that.
They reached the final and came within a penalty shootout of lifting the trophy. Now they return as Premier League champions with a stronger squad and the sort of depth that allows Arteta to look towards his bench and discover another £50 million international footballer sitting there patiently warming his hamstrings.
There is also something different psychologically about Arsenal now.
For years, Bayern Munich appearing next to their name in a European draw tended to produce the same emotional response as realising the piece of blue cheese you've just eaten wasn't actually blue by design.
It was cheddar.
From 2024.
Not anymore.
Real Madrid at the Emirates should be enormous. Bayern away will tell us plenty. Napoli will be awkward and Dortmund remain capable of making almost any European evening peculiar.
But Arsenal should be aiming beyond merely surviving this league phase.
They should be trying to win the bloody thing.
No pressure.
Liverpool: Oh, Do P**s Off
Atlético Madrid, Porto, Villarreal and Lens at Anfield.
Inter Milan, Club Brugge, Fenerbahçe and LASK away.
That's it.
That's Liverpool's Champions League draw.
Somebody check the computer.
Inter away is obviously difficult. Atlético can turn any football match into a three hour hostage negotiation and Fenerbahçe in Istanbul isn't anybody's idea of a relaxing evening.
But no Real Madrid.
No Barcelona.
No Bayern.
No PSG.
Liverpool appear to have entered Europe's premier club competition and selected Medium from the difficulty menu.
Iraola, naturally, has described the opposition as difficult and spoken about the challenge Liverpool are looking forward to.
Quite right too.
A manager can't stand in front of Liverpool's official media channel and say, "Christ, we've had a touch there."
But they have.
Liverpool are themselves a fascinating unknown this season. Iraola has inherited an extraordinarily talented squad but, as the opening weekend at Newcastle demonstrated, there are still defensive vulnerabilities and the new manager's ideas will require time.
Going forward, however, there is enough talent to cause anybody problems.
And this draw gives Iraola something precious during a managerial transition.
Margin for error.
Liverpool should finish in the top eight.
If they don't, UEFA's computer isn't taking the blame.
Manchester City: Eight More Charges
PSG at home.
Barcelona away.
Napoli at home.
Sporting at home.
Then trips to Porto, Leipzig and Lens, with AEK Athens also visiting Manchester.
Someone at UEFA apparently decided City's first post Guardiola Champions League campaign needed content.
It certainly has some.
Barcelona against City is one of the great fixtures produced by the draw, while PSG at the Etihad gives Enzo Maresca an early examination against the team currently occupying the European throne.
There are reunions everywhere too.
Rodri returns with Barcelona. Kevin De Bruyne comes back with Napoli.
It's less a fixture list than an extremely expensive school reunion.
City are harder to assess than they have been for years.
For much of the Guardiola era you could look at almost any collection of eight European opponents and confidently predict that City would have 68 per cent possession against all of them while somebody on television explained the importance of creating an overload in the half space.
Now there is genuine uncertainty.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
The squad remains absurdly talented and City have enough European experience to frighten anybody, but there is transition here and this draw gives Maresca very little time to settle into continental life.
Still, City are accustomed to receiving intimidating looking lists from governing bodies.
At least this one only has eight things on it.
Manchester United: A Picture Paints A Thousand Words
Bayern Munich at Old Trafford.
Atlético Madrid away.
Roma at home.
Sporting away.
Leipzig at home.
Villarreal away.
Sabah at home.
Como away.
And then UEFA's television director performed perhaps the finest piece of analysis of the evening.
The cameras found Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Omar Berrada.
Ratcliffe's eyebrows went north.
Berrada stared into the middle distance.
For several glorious seconds neither man said anything, yet somehow Manchester United's entire Champions League prospects had been discussed.
Somewhere on the internet, a thousand meme accounts simultaneously clocked in for work.
The footage immediately began circulating online, which was slightly unfortunate for Berrada because his subsequent official assessment was considerably more upbeat.
Fantastic opponents. Exciting to be back. Bayern at Old Trafford. Wonderful history.
All perfectly true.
But faces are troublesome things.
The mouth says "fantastic opponents".
The eyes occasionally say "Olise against Luke Shaw".
United's draw isn't actually catastrophic.
It's just relentlessly annoying.
Bayern are Bayern. Atlético away remains one of Europe's least relaxing business trips. Roma will arrive with several thousand supporters, considerable technical ability and almost certainly some form of grievance. Sporting are dangerous. Leipzig can play.
Even Como away, which sounds like something you'd win after correctly identifying the mystery celebrity on This Morning, could be difficult under Cesc Fàbregas.
United are back in the Champions League after a long enough absence for the return itself to feel significant.
Whether they're ready for it is another question.
We'll know soon enough.
Sir Jim may already have his suspicions.
Aston Villa: What Did You Do To The Computer?
PSG.
Barcelona.
Borussia Dortmund.
Galatasaray.
Fenerbahçe.
Club Brugge.
Slavia Prague.
Viking.
Lovely.
Villa fought their way back into the Champions League by winning the Europa League and UEFA's computer has rewarded them by opening the front door, congratulating them warmly and releasing the dogs.
PSG visit Villa Park.
So do Dortmund and Fenerbahçe.
Villa travel to Barcelona, Galatasaray, Brugge and Prague.
If Unai Emery wanted to ease his reconstructed squad gently into the competition, this isn't ideal.
But there is another way of looking at it.
This is exactly what Villa worked to get back into.
Barcelona away isn't a punishment.
PSG under the lights at Villa Park isn't a problem to be endured.
This is the point.
Villa supporters spent decades without these nights and now they've got enough of them to require an industrial quantity of annual leave.
And if you're going to hand that draw to somebody, Emery isn't a bad choice.
Few managers appear to enjoy European football quite as much.
You suspect that while everyone else in Monaco was still applauding the draw, Emery had already watched three Galatasaray matches and identified a vulnerability at the back post.
Villa have been through significant upheaval and their squad doesn't possess the sheer depth available to some of the clubs around them.
Qualification may be uncomfortable.
But nobody should fancy playing them either.
PSG: Catch Us If You Can
For all the attention lavished on the English clubs, there remains one fairly important question.
Who beats Paris Saint Germain?
PSG enter the season as back to back European champions.
That changes the psychology of the competition.
They're no longer the fabulously wealthy club desperately trying to prove that all the money can eventually purchase the one trophy they really want.
They've proved it.
Twice.
Everyone else is chasing them.
Their draw includes City and Villa away, Bayern at home and Barcelona away, so UEFA hasn't exactly provided them with a ceremonial procession towards February.
Good.
If someone wants their trophy, they're going to have to earn it.
Real Madrid: Because They'Re Real Madrid
There are complicated statistical models for predicting the Champions League.
Expected goals.
Squad values.
Age profiles.
Possession adjusted defensive actions.
You can feed all of it into the most sophisticated computer available and eventually it will produce an answer.
Then Real Madrid will score in the 93rd minute and make the computer look like a dickhead.
They remain impossible to ignore.
The Bernabéu has swallowed too many apparently superior teams for anyone sensible to dismiss them and they possess enough individual talent to turn a bad performance into a victory in approximately twelve seconds.
Arsenal at the Emirates will be fascinating.
Because increasingly, Arsenal look like one of the few teams in Europe capable of staring back.
The Usual Suspects
Barcelona remain capable of being both breathtaking and slightly unhinged, sometimes during the same passage of play.
Bayern are Bayern, which is about as much Champions League analysis as Bayern generally require.
Inter retain enough European nous to make themselves thoroughly unpleasant over two legs once the competition becomes serious.
Atlético remain Atlético.
Diego Simeone could probably turn a children's birthday party into a 0 0 draw and somehow get the bouncy castle booked for dissent.
There will also inevitably be one established European giant that spends several hundred million pounds, loses somewhere nobody expected and causes its entire national press to declare a constitutional crisis.
That's part of the charm.
And Then There'S Sabah
This might be my favourite story in the entire competition.
Sabah FC were founded in Azerbaijan in 2017.
Yes, 2017.
There are tins of beans in British cupboards older than this football club.
Nine years later they are in the Champions League and their fixture list includes Arsenal, Manchester United, Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund.
Their manager, Valdas Dambrauskas, has an even better backstory.
Years ago, while trying to build his coaching career, he appeared on the Lithuanian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, won money and used some of it to help fund his football education.
Now he's preparing for Barcelona.
That is wonderful.
Football spends an enormous amount of time disappearing up its own backside discussing financial regulations, coefficients, commercial revenue and global media rights.
Then every so often a story like Sabah turns up and reminds you why the whole ridiculous circus became popular in the first place.
They probably won't win it.
I'm prepared to stick my neck out there.
But imagine if they beat Manchester United.
Sir Jim's face might require its own television channel.
So Who Wins It?
The sensible shortlist isn't particularly adventurous.
PSG are the benchmark.
Arsenal look better equipped than ever to go one step further.
Real Madrid can never be excluded because apparently normal rules governing time, probability and human mortality cease to operate at the Bernabéu after the 85th minute.
Liverpool have enough attacking talent and a favourable enough league phase to grow into Iraola's methods before the competition becomes brutal.
City remain City, even while undergoing significant change.
Barcelona and Bayern are entirely capable of winning it.
Villa are my outsiders from England, although their first task is surviving whatever personal disagreement UEFA's computer appears to have with them.
United?
Let's see.
The Ridiculous Thing Is, It Works
It is perfectly reasonable to dislike this Champions League format.
Thirty six teams is too many.
Twenty four progressing is extraordinarily forgiving.
The league table occasionally requires the sort of mathematical modelling normally associated with tracking asteroids.
And the draw itself now consists largely of famous people ceremonially selecting balls while a computer backstage does the actual work.
Yet look at what it has produced.
Arsenal against Real Madrid.
Barcelona against Manchester City.
Manchester United against Bayern.
PSG at Villa Park.
Liverpool at Inter.
City against PSG.
Villa at Barcelona.
They're fantastic football matches.
Perhaps that's UEFA's greatest trick.
They've created a competition sufficiently complicated to annoy almost everybody and filled it with fixtures sufficiently good that almost everybody will watch anyway.
We'll complain about the format.
We'll complain about the computer.
We'll complain about coefficients, schedules, money and whatever new interpretation of handball UEFA introduces approximately six minutes before Matchday 1.
Then the lights will go down.
The music will start.
And we'll all watch the bloody thing.
Even Sir Jim.
Although judging by Thursday night's evidence, possibly through his fingers.
