Part of the new Champions League format is that the knockout round matchups are not drawn anew after every completed round, but are rather set in a bracket, much like the playoffs would be in leagues like the NFL.
It’s not exactly the same, but certainly a similar concept, including the part where some of the matchups are set based on rankings in the “regular season” (“league phase”) rather than any sort of random chance brought on by the twirling of the balls in a glass bowl.
So, with Chelsea finishing sixth in the table, we know that our opponents in the Round of 16 will be one of just four teams: PSG, Newcastle United, AS Monaco, or Qarabag. Those are the teams finishing 11th and 12th, and 21st and 22nd. They play against each other in the Round of 32 (PSG vs. Monaco; Newcastle vs. Qarabag), with the winners advancing to play either Chelsea or Barcelona (who finished just ahead of us, in fifth).
At that point, there will be a brief draw to determine the exact matchups. Chelsea and Barca will be the “seeded” teams for that draw while the advancing winners will be “unseeded”. Given that both PSG and Newcastle are heavy favorites in their matchups, we will likely play one of them next.
I would argue that we’ve gotten a bit lucky by getting on the slightly easier side of the bracket — we already know we can beat PSG, Barcelona, and Liverpool — avoiding the likes of Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Real Madrid, and Serie A-leaders Inter Milan (or, say, Atalanta, even!) until the very end, should we get there.
So let’s make it count!
