Champions League 2023/24 pots: which teams can Real Madrid play against?

OK, here we go. The Champions League 22/23 has finished, so naturally it’s time to talk about next season’s tournament. That’s how football works. Manchester City beat Inter 1-0 in Istanbul and moments later they were being quizzed about their futures, so what does it hurt looking on towards next season’s elite competition?

I’m sure that you were, just as I was, hanging on the edge of your seat with the end of the Bulgarian league finally rocketing its way towards us all, giving us the final teams that will fight for a place in the continental tournament. It’s Ludogorets, by the way.

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How do the Champions League pots for the draw work?

Luckily, we don’t have to wait long for it to start. The preliminary qualifying round will begin on June 27 where teams from San Marino, Andorra, Montenegro and Iceland will go head to head to make it through.

There are 26 teams that are certain to be in the group stages next year, but we still don’t know all of the designated pots of each team. That’s because of UEFA’s marvellous coefficient system, an incredibly complicated algorithm which decides definitively who is the greatest team in all the land.

You’ll notice in the table below that some teams have more teams than others. That’s UEFA’s idea as they are waiting until the entire qualification process has finished before filing teams in to different pots to be drawn out into groups. The joy.

When does Champions League qualification start?

The first qualifying round proper will take place on 11-12 and 18-19 July, with the second coming just a week later, on 25-26 July and 1-2 August. In the second round, teams such as Galatasaray, Genk, Molde, Copenhagen and Molde will join.

More teams join a week later, on 8-9 August as well as the 15th, with Marseille, PSV, AEK Athen and Braga some of the teams to get in on the complicated fun. But that’s not all. There is another round: the final round.

Royal Amberes and Young Boys make a late entrance to the party and the remaining teams fight in what is called the ‘play-off’ round. The six winners of these games will finally join the already 26 confirmed teams.

What about Newcastle?

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned Real Sociedad, Celtic and Newcastle. That was not by mistake. These three teams are a special case and could go into Pot 3 or 4, depending on the results of the qualifiers. If the teams who make it through from the preliminary rounds fill the three places left in Pot 3 group due to their higher coefficient, they would go into Pot 4. And, with that, we are finished. Breathe.