Champions League matchday 1: Real Madrid against Inter

The Champions League league phase begins on Tuesday 8 September and runs across three nights, with eighteen matches — one for each of the thirty-six clubs in the competition.

This is the third season of the format that replaced the group stage: one table, eight matches each, the top eight straight to the last sixteen and the sides finishing ninth to twenty-fourth into a playoff. The first of those eight is next week.

The tie of the round

Real Madrid against Internazionale, on the Tuesday. Two clubs with thirteen European Cups between them meeting on the opening night is the sort of pairing the old group stage produced perhaps twice a decade; the league phase produces it because the draw is not constrained by keeping four teams apart.

The English clubs

Manchester City open away at Porto on the Tuesday, seven days after signing Enzo Fernandez for £125m.

Liverpool host Atletico Madrid on the Wednesday, which given their start — two points from two, four goals conceded, twice pegged back — is a considerably less comfortable opening than it looked when the draw was made.

Arsenal travel to Napoli the same night. Two clean sheets in the league and a defence that has conceded nothing so far makes them the English side arriving in the best shape.

Manchester United host Sabah on the Thursday, and Aston Villa go to Club Brugge on the Tuesday — a first European night of the season for a side that has not scored in the Premier League.

The rest of the opening round

Barcelona host Feyenoord and Bayern Munich host Bodo/Glimt. Paris Saint-Germain host Slovan Bratislava, Borussia Dortmund host Villarreal, and Sporting CP meet Galatasaray.

There is also AEK Athens against LASK Linz, Stuttgart against Viking, Lille against Real Betis, Fenerbahce against Roma, PSV against Shakhtar Donetsk, Como against RB Leipzig and Slavia Prague against Lens.

How the draw produced these fixtures

The pairings were settled by a draw that assigned each club two opponents from each of the four pots, one at home and one away, with the restriction that no two clubs from the same country can meet in the league phase.

That is how Real Madrid and Inter, both seeded in the top pot, ended up playing each other in the first week: in the old group stage they could not have been drawn together at all. It is also why Liverpool have Atletico Madrid and Arsenal have Napoli in the same round, and why an opening night can contain three matches that would each have been a last-sixteen tie under the previous format.

The trade-off is that the eight matches are not equal. A club can draw a favourable set from the four pots and another can draw a brutal one, and the table at the end treats both the same. That is the criticism of the format and it is a fair one.

What the format actually does

Thirty-six clubs, one table, eight matches each against eight different opponents, two drawn from each of the four pots. No club plays anyone twice, and no club meets another from its own country during the league phase.

That produces 144 fixtures across the eight rounds, and it produces the pairings the old format could not: Real Madrid and Inter in September, Liverpool and Atletico in the opening week, Napoli and Arsenal on the same night.

The cut comes twice. The top eight go straight into the last sixteen in March. Ninth to twenty-fourth play a two-legged playoff in February for the other eight places. Twenty-fifth to thirty-sixth are out of Europe altogether — there is no drop into the Europa League any more, which is the change that gives a match in November genuine weight.

Why the first round matters more than it used to

Under the old format an opening defeat could be absorbed across five remaining group games against the same three opponents. In a thirty-six team table, every result is measured against every other club rather than against three, and the margins between eighth and ninth — between the last sixteen and a playoff — come down to single points across eight matches.

You can play the whole thing out yourself on the Champions League simulator on this site: the 144 fixtures are the real ones from the draw, the table sorts by the competition rules, and the cut at eighth and twenty-fourth is where it will actually fall in January.

The first round is the only one where every club still has eight matches left and nothing to defend. From the second onwards, somebody is always protecting a position, and the table starts doing the thing the format was designed for: making a Tuesday in Porto or a Thursday in Prague matter to a club that is not playing in either.