Champions League: You Do the Draw! Try the Simulator

Among the tools available to fans to pass the time just a few hours before the Champions League draw (scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo) is this draw simulator, available for free. It’s simply a game, but it can give you an idea of how the group stage works and how the schedules for the 36 participating teams are drawn up.

TRY THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW SIMULATOR

The simulator offers two modes of interaction: the one that most closely mirrors reality lets you draw each team pot by pot, just as will happen at the Grimaldi Forum. The second, more straightforward mode automatically generates each club’s eight opponents in an instant.

TRY THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW SIMULATOR

Sportal.it also used the simulator to generate a complete draw, resulting in these matchups for the four Italian teams:

Inter: Stuttgart (home), Feyenoord (away), Villarreal (home), Sabah (away), Real Madrid (home), PSG (away), Manchester United (away), and Aston Villa (home).

Napoli: LASK (away), AEK (home), Leipzig (away), Bodo/Glimt (home), Liverpool (home), Real Madrid (away), Aston Villa (away), and Borussia Dortmund (home).

TRY THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE DRAW SIMULATOR

Roma: Manchester United (home), Bayern (away), Slavia Prague (home), Fenerbahçe (away), Villarreal (home), Sporting (away), Stuttgart (away), and Arsenal (home).

Como: PSG (home), Sporting (away), Galatasaray (home), Arsenal (away), AEK (away), Slavia Prague (home), Fenerbahçe (away), and PSV (home).