Uefa guarantees four Champions League berths for top four leagues in Europe

Finally, UEFA will change the way Champions League money is distributed among the clubs. Zorya qualified as Ukraine’s fourth-placed team.

The Champions League will continue to have a 32-team group stage and a 16-club knockout phase and the Europa League remains at 48 teams, although in a new development the winners will automatically qualify for the Champions League group stage rather than receive the ticket to the play-off round they are now awarded.

One of those was in the Champions League, in Germany against Borussia Dortmund, but he never featured at home in Europe.

Currently, the top three teams from the top three leagues go straight into the Champions League.

Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, AC Milan and Inter Milan – all Champions League winners in the past 12 seasons – were missing from Thursday’s draw.

European football’s governing body UEFA has announced that the top four leagues in its co-efficient rankings – now Spain, Germany, England and Italy – will all be guaranteed four spots in the group stages from season 2018-19.

In recent seasons, Italy typically has had only two group-stage teams because Serie A’s third-place team often loses in the playoffs.

The 10 top team ranked leagues are now Spain, Germany, England, Italy, France, Russia, Portugal, Ukraine, Belgium and Turkey. That means half of the group stage will come from four leagues.

Italy is the big victor in the new agreement, which had to be completed this year to let UEFA start selling broadcasting and sponsorship rights for the 2018-21 commercial cycle.

UEFA uses a complicated coefficient system to rank the leagues, based on the results of their clubs during the previous five seasons.

Under changes, the previous season’s Europa League victor will automatically qualify for the group stages.

Borussia Monchengladbach and Celtic make up the pool with Guardiola adding: “We’ll have to make our best performance to go through to the next stage”.

Many clubs have expressed concerns – primarily through the ECA – about the qualifying criteria and format of UEFA club competitions.

UEFA also stopped short of guaranteeing captive places for certain big clubs, another possibility which sources said had been discussed privately in meetings over the past few months. This in turn leads the same handful of teams dominating the competition and makes the group stage a mere formality for teams from the bigger leagues.