Welcome to the 28th edition of the UEFA Champions League (65th including the old competitions).

Let's look at last season's OP which feature a bunch of open questions first:

No. As it turns out, selling the guy that consistently scores 10+ goals in every CL campaign for seven years without a proper backup does weaken your team a bit. Huh.

No. As it turns out, Ronaldo couldn't quite do it on a warm night in Torino, bagging just six goals in the campaign compared to Messi's twelve.

Yes. The rise of Ajax was certainly a surprise, and Tottenham's run wasn't quite expected either, given the opposition they faced.

2018-19 RECAP

So, let's take a quick very extended look at last season.

Predictions were made way before a ball was kicked:

Most (15 of 66) posters predicted Liverpool to take it down:

Qualifying and Group Stage

Qualifying was fun, with another episode of "LÖL Salzburg" (more on that later)
Pot strengths were discussed:
On the final matchday of the groups, Liverpool needed a win against Napoli while Spurs had to match Inter's result playing Barcelona. Somehow, both made it work, with Lucas scoring a late equalizer against Barca to match the 1-1 of Inter against PSV. Or, to put it short:

The Round of 16 draw provided a couple of interesting ties and reactions:
On to the more interesting ties: PSG were drawn against United and Ajax faced Real in the first knock-out round. United had sacked Mourinho before Christmas, and now Ole was at the wheel. United supporters were not very optimistic:
The first legs provided no real surprises, as PSG won its game at Old Trafford 2-0, and Real winning 2-1 @Ajax:
The return legs, however, had quite more on offer: First off, Real vs. Ajax:


PSG vs. United

1:0 Lukaku 2'
1:1 Bernat 12'
1:2 Lukaku 30'
Obligatory:
Then came the 94th minute.

Ronaldo also turned around the 0-2 first leg loss against Atletico with a hattrick in the return leg (insert about 50 GOAT posts here)

Quarter-finals: Spurs - City, ManU - Barca, Pool - Porto, Ajax - Juve
City line-up for the first leg, presented by 8bus:
But then: Maybe they aren't? Well, so with the 1-0 of Spurs in the first leg, let's take a look at the 2nd leg:

City line-up for the second leg, presented by 8bus: And let's jump 11 minutes in:
Not quite the 3-0 after 30, but 2-2 after 11 minutes was spectacular enough: City scored two more to make it 4-2, but Llorente scored the third away goal for Spurs in the 73rd minute which meant Tottenham would go through to the semis.

But did he?

He did. Then, in the dying minutes of injury time, Sterling tapped the ball over the line to make it 5-3 and send City through.
But did he?


Semifinals:

If the quarter-final between Spurs and City wasn't dramatic enough, the semi-finals between Liverpool-Barca and Spurs-Ajax were even crazier: Ajax won their away leg 1-0, while Barca took a 3-0 home victory, with goals by Suarez and two by Messi:

And Dembele squandering a possible fourth in the last minute:
However, Pool fans were still realistic about their chances in the return leg:
The magical Anfield night was off to a good start with the Origi opener in the 7th minute:

At 1-0 half-time, Klopp brought on Wijnaldum for Robertson: Two goals within as many minutes had suddenly leveled the tie at 3-3:

Trent-Alexander Arnold had a final trick up his sleeve with his corner in the 79th minute, taking a quick corner against the sleeping Barca defense, which led to the 4-0 by Origi:


Liverpool held on to their lead and went through to the final.
Now, everyone except Spurs fans were rooting for Ajax to join Pool in the final. And everything started off pretty good, with two goals in the first half by Ajax, taking their aggregate lead to 3-0.
But eerily similar to the previous semi-final, Lucas scored two goals within four minutes to bring Spurs back into contention after 60 minutes played. Just one more goal was needed:
And sure enough, with the final kick of the game, over 5 minutes into injury time:
So the all-English final was set. And overall, and especially compared to the dramatic way both teams got there, it was pretty boring. Salah converted a penalty after just over a minute, both teams struggled to create much at all, and in the end it was Origi to put the dagger into Spurs' hopes of winning the trophy.



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Teams and qualifying in 2019-20

A total of 79 teams will enter the UEFA Champions League. 26 of these teams have qualified for the Group Stage already, the other 53 will play up to five qualifying rounds: Here is the overview of the qualifying process:



Preliminary round: The champions of Gibraltar, Andorra, San Marino and Kosovo battle it out for a place in the first qualifying round (single-leg!)



First qualifying round: The winner of the preliminary round is joined by 31 champions of lower-ranked associations (yes, this does include Scotland). The draw for this and the second qualifying round will both happen on Tuesday. Notably we have a couple of debutants:

• Piast Gliwice, who shocked Poland by winning the league after narrowly avoiding relegation in 2017-18,
• Riga FC - not to be confused with Skonto Riga, although they share the stadium. FOunded in 2014 by a fusion of two clubs.
• Ararat-Armenia, who were the actually the last team to qualify after winning 1-0 in their final league match, beating 14-time champion Pyunik by a single point. Founded in 2017.
• Saburtalo Tbilisi, playing top division since 2015 and bought in 2005 by the guy who later became Minister of Sport. Hm.

Second qualifying round (Q2): The champions of four more higher-ranked associations jump in, and the League Path starts off as well. Due to the draw for Q2 happening before Q1 is finished, whoever beats a seeded team in Q1 will take their coefficient to the next round (e.g. Sarajevo beating Celtic would make Sarajevo seeded for the Q2).



Third qualifying round (Q3): Ajax and PAOK join the Champions Path, while the League Path is stuffed with 6 more teams, two of them playing in the CL for the first time:
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• Krasnodar finished 3rd in the Russian Premier League and will play CL after 5 consecutive seasons of EL, notably knocking out Leverkusen and coming close to knocking out Valencia as well.
• LASK has actually played the 1965-66 European Cup, losing 2-5 to Gornik Zabrze in the preliminary round. In 2018-19, they lost to Besiktas on away goals in Q3 of the Europa League.

Play-off round (PO): Final round of qualifying, with Swiss champions Young Boys and Czech champions Slavia Prague entering the competition. Note: VAR will be used from this round on.



Group Stage: The six playoff winners join the 26 teams already qualified. Pot 1 consists of CL and EL winners Pool/Chelsea, pluzs the six champions of the highest-ranked associations. Pots 2 to 4 are ranked by the club coefficient:



The annual LÖL Salzburg corner

Welp.

After more than a decade of failure in CL qualifying, capped with a blown 2-0 lead in the return play-off leg against Belgrade, RB Salzburg has finally managed to make it to the group stage, because Austria has moved up to 11th in the association ranking, giving the champion an automatic group stage berth. RIP LÖL Salzburg column

• 2006-07: lost 1-3 to Valencia in Q3.
• 2007-08: lost 2-3 to Shakhtar in Q3.
• 2009-10: lost 1-5 to Maccabi Haifa in the play-off round.
• 2010-11: lost 3-4 to Hapoel Tel Aviv in the play-off round.
• 2011-12: lost 4-4 (away goals) to Dudelange (Luxembourg) in Q2.
• 2013-14: lost 2-4 to Fenerbahce in Q3.
• 2014-15: lost 2-4 to Malmö in the play-off round.
• 2015-16: lost 2-3 to Malmö in Q3.
• 2016-17: lost 2-3 to Dinamo Zagreb in the play-off round.
• 2017-18: lost 1-1 (away goals) to Rijeka in Q3
• 2018-19: lost 2-2 (away goals) to Red Star in the play-off round.
• 2019-20: Qualifies directly for the Group Stage

DER MARKT



Let's have some open question to muse over:

• Given the final will be in Istanbul, will one of the two Turkish clubs make a deep run? Galatasaray has not reached the knock-out stage since 2013-2014, with Besiktas being the last RO16 participant in 2017-18. Basaksehir will probably struggle to qualify for the Group Stage at all.
• Can Ajax repeat their run of last season? They will have to go through qualification as the Dutch coefficient had dropped (last season was not included yet).
• How many goals will Ronaldo score? After having scored 10+ for eight(!) consecutive seasons, his tally dropped off to 6, the lowest since his first season at Real in 2009-10.
• Who will be this season's surprise semi-finalist, if any?

Let's ****ing go.

This is our year.

I'm obviously not joking.

Also, great OP, FC!

OP already better than the group stage will be.

Liking Juve at 10/1

OP is good, title is not.

Show some respect for your six time champions of Europe, Liverpool FC

In on the ground floor of this fine thread and tournament

#7 incoming

Great OP.

In for Madrid come back.

The draw for the 2nd qualifying round was done today: Celtic should have an easy run to Q3 at least.

Great OP.

With Zidane in charge, clueless tactically, lacking any apparent plan, a motivated Madrid crush everyone again.

Great OP. There just seems to be an issue with the poll. Chelsea are in ‘other’ and Spuds have a prestigious voting option for themselves. I refer you to the English Premier League table for an accurate representation of hierarchy and the trophy cabinet.

I’m really looking forward to city absolutely cruising to the quarterfinals so pep can start the corpse of David Silva and gundogan centrally over Bernardo and kdb

Could use a shared poll option for Barca/Spurs.

It's not really a comeback when you've already won 12 or 13.

13

So many I can't keep count anymore.

Preliminary Round - Semifinal results

Tre Penne (San Marino) 0-1 Santa Coloma (Andorra)
KF Feronikeli (Kosovo) 1-0 Lincoln Red Imps (Gibraltar)

Final between Feronikeli and Santa Coloma will be played on Friday.

The winner will play Welsh team The New Saints in the first (proper) round of qualifying.

Sorry if the tongue in cheek didn't filter through the forum.

The same to you.

6 of the 16 Q1 ties are done, three seeded and three unseeded teams have advanced.

Notably, Nomme Kalju have knocked out seeded Shkendija and will face Celtic next (unless they somehow royally **** up against Sarajevo tomorrow).

Saburtalo Tbilisi have held on to their 3-0 advantage from the away leg against Tiraspol (although they went down 0-3 in the first 10 minutes), and face Dinamo Zagreb in Q2.

Also through to Q2: Red Star Belgrade, Valletta, HJK, and The New Saints.

Surprised only 1 vote for Juventus so far

City v Juventus final for me (if they don't get drawn against each other before that is)

It's going to be the boy Frenkie de Jong playing crazy side passes to Busquets playing it back to De Jong who plays it on to Messi who naturally wins a foul and then they pass it back to OAFK in goal because he knows how to get the ball back out to Frenkie and of course they are already 1-0 up thanks to the boys controlling the VARmachine and this will be repeated for every match of all the groups and all the ties until they are declared the winner of the league of the champions with Frenkie de Jong being crowned champion of the champions you heard it here first