The winds of change are blowing through Monaco, where the 32 clubs in the Champions League have gathered to discover their fate in Thursday’s draw for the group stage.
It is the last Champions League draw before Uefa brings in a radical new format for its elite competition and there is also a changing of the guard among the players: for the first time in 20 seasons there will be no Lionel Messi involved in the competition and – because of the Saudi exodus – no Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar or Karim Benzema either.
Those departures will increase the attention on how the English clubs fare in the draw, along with those English players now at continental sides.
English clubs cannot be drawn in the same
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