The Champions League has reached the round-of-16 stage after the play-offs concluded on Wednesday night with Real Madrid, PSV Eindhoven, Paris St-Germain and Borussia Dortmund all booking their place in the draw.
The four victors from the two-legged ties will join Feyenoord, Club Brugge, Bayern Munich and Benfica as the eight unseeded teams who will now take on those seeded teams who finished in the top eight of the league phase.
Reigning champions Real Madrid made light work of Manchester City by putting three goals past Pep Guardiola’s side for the second match in a row, securing a 6-3 aggregate victory thanks to a Kylian Mbappe hat-trick.
PSG were perhaps the most emphatic winners of the night though, dispatching fellow Ligue 1 side Brest 7-0 to clinch a 10-0 aggregate victory, with Dortmund’s goalless draw seeing off Sporting 3-0 and PSV needing extra time to eliminate Italian giants Juventus – a 3-1 victory overturning a first-leg deficit and securing a 4-3 aggregate win.
The draw for the last-16 round takes place in Nyon, Switzerland, on Friday, February 21. It will start at 11am UK time and will be live-streamed on Uefa.com and broadcast on TNT Sport 1.
Who is in the last 16?
Teams who finished the new Swiss-format league phase between first and eighth were seeded and automatically through to the last 16, with the unseeded teams between ninth and 24th then playing off to join them.
Following the completion of the play-off round, now Uefa will draw which one of the two teams in each bracket will play the play-off winners.
The seeded team will, in principle, play the return leg at home. Potential opponents are also pre-defined by pairings of teams’ final league positions that was decided at end of the league phase last month.
League phase top eight (seeded, ordered by league phase position)
1. Liverpool
2. Barcelona
3. Arsenal
4. Inter Milan
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Leverkusen
7. Lille
8. Aston Villa
Knockout phase play-off winners (unseeded, ordered by league phase position)
10. Borussia Dortmund
11. Real Madrid
12. Bayern Munich
14. PSV
15. Paris St-Germain
16. Benfica
19. Feyenoord
24. Club Brugge
Who can Liverpool face?
Liverpool, Arsenal and Aston Villa finished in the top eight so progressed directly into the last 16. The Merseyside club’s top spot and top-seed status hands them a tie against either PSG or Benfica after they defeated Brest and Monaco 10-0 and 4-3 respectively. Liverpool will also play their second leg of the round of 16 tie at home, and the team that they do not draw will instead face Barcelona.
Who can Arsenal face?
Arsenal’s third-place finish means they face either PSV or Feyenoord.
Who can Aston Villa face?
Villa’s eighth-place slot hands them either Dortmund or Club Brugge.
What happens to the teams who are knocked out?
There is no buffer of the Europa League like years gone by. Those teams who lost the play-offs joins all those teams who finished 25th or below in European elimination. The Europa League and Europa Conference League are also using the Swiss model format.
When is the last-16 round?
First legs will be played on March 4-5, with the return leg the following week on March 11-12.
The rest of the tournament follows as…
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Quarter-finals: April 8-9 and 15-16
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Semi-finals: April 29-30 and May 6-7
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Final: May 31
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