Women's Champions League group stage draw

The UEFA Women's Champions League group stage draw has been made in Nyon by UEFA managing director of women's football Nadine Kessler and two-time competition winner Fatmire Alushi.

Match dates

Matchday 1: 8/9 October
Matchday 2: 16/17 October
Matchday 3: 12/13 November
Matchday 4: 20/21 November
Matchday 5: 11/12 December
Matchday 6: 17/18 December

Kick-off times: 18:30 CET/18:45 CET or 20:45 CET/21:00 CET

Purpose and conditions of the draw

The purpose of the group stage draw was to divide the 16 teams into four groups of four. The groups are lettered A to D.

The conditions to be observed were as follows:

• Clubs from the same country must not be drawn in the same group.

• In the case of associations with two representatives, for TV coverage reasons these clubs were paired in order to split their matches between the Tuesday and Wednesday or the Wednesday and Thursday of each matchweek. In the case of associations with three representatives, only two clubs were paired. These pairings will be based on projected TV audiences.

Paired teams

A: FC Barcelona and Real Madrid CF
B: FC Bayern München and VfL Wolfsburg
C: Chelsea FC Women and Arsenal Women FC
D: Juventus FC and AS Roma

• Each club plays one home and one away match against each other club in its group. A club does not play more than two home or two away matches in a row and each club plays one home match and one away match on the first and last two matchdays. Clubs should play all other clubs in their group once before Matchday 4.

 Draw explanations

For the group stage draw, the 16 clubs involved were seeded into four draw pots of four teams.

The first pot comprises the titleholders (top seed) and the domestic champions of the three top-ranked associations in the access list. As the titleholders were the domestic champions of one of the top three associations, the first pot was completed with the champions of the association ranked fourth in the access list.

The other three pots were composed in accordance with the club coefficient rankings established at the beginning of the season.

To ensure that paired clubs from the same country play on separate days as per the aforementioned pairing principles, the four groups were be distinguished by colour: Groups A and B were red and Groups C and D blue.

When a paired club was drawn, for example, in one of the red groups (A or B), the other paired club – once it had been drawn – was automatically assigned to one of the two blue groups (C or D).

The red groups and the blue groups will necessarily play in two different match sequences.

Draw procedure

Pot 1

The draw started with pot 1 and the four teams drawn were allocated to the four groups in alphabetical order from Group A to Group D.

Pots 2 to 4

Continuing with pot 2, a ball was drawn at random. It was opened to display the name of the team drawn and the computer then indicates which groups were available for this club.

A bowl was then prepared containing balls representing each of the groups into which the club could be drawn. One ball was drawn from this bowl to determine which of the available groups the team would play in.

Please note that the options available to a team depended not only on the team’s own attributes and those of the teams already drawn, but also on the attributes of the other teams still to be drawn. This was enabled by computer calculations, which were needed to anticipate all possible scenarios and prevent any deadlock situations.

Once all the teams in pot 2 had been drawn, the procedure was repeated for the teams in pots 3 and 4, in that order.

Teams from pot 1 were provisionally placed in the first position in their groups; teams from pot 2 provisionally took the second position in their groups, and so on. Once the draw procedure was been completed, the computer assigned the final positions of the teams in each group.

Group fixtures will run between 8 October and 18 December and scheduled to be confirmed on Saturday.

Draw guest: Fatmire Alushi

Two-time winner Fatmire Alushi will be the special guest at the draw. Known as Fatmire Bajramaj for most of her career, the Germany midfielder won the competition with Duisburg (2008/09) and Turbine Potsdam (2009/10), also reaching the final with Potsdam (2010/11), FFC Frankfurt (2011/12) and Paris Saint-Germain (2014/15).

Fatmire Alushi factfile

Getty Images

Club career: Duisburg (2004–09), Turbine Potsdam (2009–11), Frankfurt (2011–14), Paris Saint-Germain (2014–16)
UEFA club honours: UEFA Women's Cup/UEFA Women's Champions League winner 2008/09 (Duisburg), 2009/10 (Turbine Potsdam)
International career: 18 goals in 79 appearances for Germany
International honours: FIFA Women's World Cup winner 2007, UEFA Women's EURO winner 2009, 2013

UEFA Women's Champions League knockout calendar

The top two teams in each group progress to the quarter-finals.

Quarter-final & semi-final draw
7 February, Nyon

Quarter-finals
First leg: 18/19 March
Second leg: 26/27 March

Semi-finals
First leg: 19/20 April
Second leg: 26/27 April

Final (Estádio José Alvalade, Lisbon)
23, 24 or 25 May tbc