Having not participated in the Champions League since the 2023–2024 season, Newcastle United will be one of six English teams to do so next season.
At least two more games will be added to our schedule for the upcoming season as it will be our first appearance in the competition under the new “league phase” system. And since the Pot 1 seeding for the 2025–2026 championship have been formally announced, we will need to perform well against some genuinely great teams if we want to advance in Europe.
Pot 1 confirmed: Newcastle’s possible rivals are made public
All of the teams that advanced to the Champions League for the following season are sorted into four pots based on their UEFA coefficient, which measures how well they have performed in recent campaigns.
The top nine teams advance to the first round, teams 10–18 advance to the second round, teams 19–27 advance to the third round, and teams 28–36 advance to the fourth round, where we shall be. Along with Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Borussia Dortmund, Pot 1 will also feature this season’s runners-up, Inter Milan, Xabi Alonso’s Real Madrid, and the recently crowned winners PSG. Due to regulations against playing teams from your own nation, we are unable to draw against the English quartet of Manchester City, Liverpool, and Chelsea in Pot 1. This implies that we will undoubtedly play two games against Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSG, Inter Milan, and Borussia Dortmund—one at home and one away.
On Thursday, August 28, a few days before the summer transfer window closes on Monday, September 1, the group phase draw will be held.
Who should we invite to the group stage of the upcoming season?
After being drawn in the ‘Group of Death’ back in 2023 against PSG, Dortmund and AC Milan, Toon fans will be hoping for an easier set of fixtures this time around. PSG beat all four English sides in this season’s campaign, but we of course got four points off Luis Enrique’s side in our historic group games, so that’s a salivating prospective tie.
Barcelona gave us arguably the finest night in our European history back in 1997, and there’s the prospect of us becoming one of the first teams to play at the refurbished Nou Camp should it be done by September. We’ve never played Real Madrid in a competitive fixture, and with there being a 33% probability of playing Los Blancos in next season’s group stage, a delicious trip to the Bernabeu might very well be on the cards. We have a long history of playing Inter Milan in the San Siro. In 2003, we went there and drew 2-2 with an Inter team that featured players like Zanetti, Cannavaro, and Vieri thanks to a brace from Alan Shearer.
Then, of the six available matches, the German powerhouses Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are arguably the most “winnable” ones: Dortmund gave us the ideal chance to exact revenge for our two losses in the group stage matches from the previous season by barely making it into the UCL this time.
READ MORE:sportchannel.co.uk
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