Ahead of the draw for the league phase of the 2026-27 Champions League, we use the Opta Power Rankings to objectively assess the quality of the English sides’ possible opponents.
The Champions League returns for a third season in its expanded format, with the draw for the 36-team league phase taking place on Thursday.
Following the strong performances of English teams in Europe last season, the Premier League was awarded an extra Champions League spot once again.
That means five English teams await their fate and will be watching the draw with eager anticipation: Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Aston Villa.
As has been the case for the past two seasons, each team will face eight opponents: two from each of the four pots. Teams cannot face more than two opponents from any single nation or any teams from the same country as themselves.
With nine teams in each pot, there is a huge variety in the quality of teams within each one, but which teams are strongest and which are weakest? Who will the English sides hope to face, and who will they want to avoid? What are the best and worst possible draws?
Here, we answer those very questions.
Champions League Draw 2026-27 Pots
Pot 1: PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid
Pot 2: Borussia Dortmund, Roma, Sporting CP, Aston Villa, Porto, Manchester United, Club Brugge, Real Betis, PSV
Pot 3: Feyenoord, Lille, Bodø/Glimt, Napoli, RB Leipzig, Villarreal, Shakhtar Donetsk, Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe
Pot 4: Slavia Prague, VfB Stuttgart, LASK, Como, Lens, Sabah, AEK Athens, Viking, Slovan Bratislava
Dream Draw for Arsenal, Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City and Aston Villa
The new format of the Champions League means that because everyone faces two teams from each pot, the best possible draw is the same for all five Premier League teams (assuming we’re talking objectively and not considering any particular bogey sides).
We can do just that and put an objective value on the difficulty of every possible draw using the Opta Power Rankings.
The Opta Power Rankings rank 16,000 teams from around the world on the same scale, allowing us to compare the quality of teams from different leagues and associations. The scale runs from 0 to 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world. Arsenal, with a rating of 100, are currently the world’s best team, just ahead of Bayern Munich (99.99).
We can therefore use this objective measure to find the two lowest-ranked non-English teams in each pot to find the easiest possible draw for the Premier League contingent.
The seven highest-ranked teams in the world are all in Pot 1, leaving the final two from that pot as the two ‘easiest’ possible opponents.
Inter Milan are ranked 10th in the world and are therefore one of the two lowest-ranked teams in Pot 1, while Atlético Madrid are the real outliers, all the way down in 31st place at the time of writing.
Diego Simeone’s side made it to last season’s semi-finals, but they also finished fourth in La Liga for the second time in three seasons, and they haven’t won any silverware since 2020-21. They are the team to face from Pot 1.
In Pot 2, PSV (45th in the world) and Real Betis (50th) are the weakest teams and the best possible opponents according to the Opta Power Rankings.
PSV won the Eredivisie last season but didn’t make it out of the league phase of the Champions League, finishing 28th with just two wins from their eight games.
Meanwhile, Betis snuck back into the Champions League after a 21-year absence following their fifth-place finish in La Liga last season (an extra spot in Europe’s premier competition was awarded to the Spanish top flight).
In Pot 3, six of the nine teams are ranked between 30th and 60th in the world but, remarkably, there are two sides who are currently outside the world’s top 100.
Feyenoord, currently at 101st, finished second in the Eredivisie last season but were 19 points off leaders PSV, while they also failed to make it out of the league phase of the Europa League, losing six of their eight games.
Shakhtar Donetsk are the lowest-ranked side from Pot 3, down in 139th. The Ukrainian champions were comfortably beaten by Crystal Palace in last season’s Conference League semi-finals.
From Pot 4, there are some very favourable draws. Sabah, the 2025-26 champions of Azerbaijan, were only founded in 2017 and, after coming through four two-legged Champions League qualifying rounds, will compete in European competition beyond the qualifiers for the first time. You may well not have heard of them, but they are not the lowest-ranked side in the competition.
That team is Slovan Bratislava, who came through their play-off round tie against Celje. Slovan Bratislava qualified for the Champions League league phase in 2024-25, but finished second from bottom with zero points from eight matches. Ranked 224th in the world, they are the lowest-ranked team in the competition.
Best Possible Draw for the English Sides
Inter Atlético Madrid PSV Real Betis Feyenoord Shakhtar Donetsk Sabah Slovan BratislavaNightmare Draw for Arsenal, Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City and Aston Villa
Using the same method, we can also look at the toughest possible draw for the English contingent. Given there are so many strong teams, there’s every chance of a very difficult draw.
From Pot 1, English sides could be pitted against Bayern Munich, currently the second-best side in the world according to our measure, and back-to-back European champions PSG, who are ranked fourth at the time of writing.
The two strongest teams in Pot 2 are the English sides: Manchester United (9th) and Aston Villa (11th), but the two toughest potential opponents for Premier League teams are Borussia Dortmund (14th) and Club Brugge (18th). Dortmund are Champions League regulars, while Brugge have impressed on the European stage in the last couple of seasons.
In Pot 3, the teams to avoid are Bodø/Glimt, who are ranked 27th in the world and beat Man City, Atlético and Inter (twice) in last season’s Champions League, and Napoli, who finished second in Serie A last season, although they only finished 30th out of 36 teams in last season’s UCL league phase.
In Pot 4, the difference between the best and worst draws is stark. Premier League teams could be faced with opponents from well outside the world’s top 150, but they could also face formidable opponents from closer to home.
Como (26th in the world) and Lens (28th) represent the biggest potential obstacles, and are both down in Pot 4 because they have so little European pedigree. Lens gave PSG a decent race for the Ligue 1 title last season, and Como came fourth in Serie A to secure their first-ever European adventure.
Worst Possible Draw for the English Sides
Bayern Munich PSG Borussia Dortmund Club Brugge Bodø/Glimt Napoli Lens ComoHow Much Does Fixture Difficulty Matter?
In short, for the best teams, the opponents you are given matter little. Bayern Munich were given the most difficult set of opponents in last season’s league phase but won seven out of eight games and finished second in the 36-team league. PSG had the second-toughest fixture list and finished outside the top eight, and so were forced into a play-off to make the knockouts, but they still went on to win the competition.
However, there’s no doubt that a kind fixture list helped Tottenham out. While enduring a miserable time domestically, Spurs finished fourth in the league phase having been handed one of the easiest draws of all 36 teams.
Meanwhile, PSV and Marseille were given tough fixture lists and both failed to even qualify for the play-off round. The standard of their opponents almost certainly contributed to their very early exits.
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Champions League Draw 2026-27: Best and Worst Scenarios for Arsenal, Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City and Aston Villa Opta Analyst.
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