The draw for the first round of the Champions League, which took place in the Swiss city of Nyon, at the headquarters of the European football association UEFA, resulted in fierce confrontations.
Liverpool were scheduled to face Real Madrid in a repeat of last season’s final, which Real Madrid won by a clean sheet, while Paris Saint-Germain would face their German counterpart Bayern Munich. German “Leipzig” met with “Manchester City”, “Milan” with “Tottenham”, “Inter” with “Porto” and “Borussia Dortmund” with “Chelsea”. Belgian club Brugge will face their Portuguese counterpart Benfica, while German club Eintracht Frankfurt will face Italian Napoli.
Matches of the 1/8 finals will be played in two legs, home and away, where the leading team will play the second leg at home. It is also worth remembering that since last season, UEFA has abolished the legal goalscoring system – the two-goal away rule. Thus, if the home and away matches end in a tie on aggregate, the two teams will go to extra games, regardless of goals scored away from the ground. And if one of them fails to change the result in additional games, they will go to penalties to separate them.
The first batch of matches of the 1/8 finals of the Champions League will take place on February 14-15, 2023, and the second batch will take place next week, on February 21 and 22. As for the return matches, the first part of them will take place on March 7 and 8, 2023, and the 1/8 finals of the European Champions League will end with matches on March 14 and 15, 2023. UEFA will draw the next rounds on 17 March 2023.
