Holders Real Madrid will face Liverpool away and host Borussia Dortmund in a repeat of last season’s final in the league stage of the new-look Champions League, the draw for which took place on Thursday. Every team will play eight games against eight different opponents in the new format of Europe’s elite club competition, with all 36 clubs now pooled together into one league rather than split into groups. Madrid, who have signed France superstar Kylian Mbappe since winning a record-extending 15th European Cup, will also notably play AC Milan at home and will go to Atalanta.

Real beat last season’s Europa League winners Atalanta in the UEFA Super Cup in Warsaw earlier this month.

Liverpool, who are back in the Champions League after a one-season absence, will also notably meet Milan and take on tournament debutants Girona.

However, supporters of the Anfield club will perhaps be most excited about the prospect of hosting German champions Bayer Leverkusen, coached by former Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso.

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, winners of the competition in 2023, will play at home to Italian champions Inter Milan and go to both Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus.

However, they were also handed more comfortable opponents including Club Brugge, Sparta Prague and Slovan Bratislava, who have never played in the modern Champions League proper.

Other standout head-to-heads will include Bayern Munich against both PSG and Barcelona, and Arsenal against Inter and Paris.

The number of clubs in the Champions League has increased from 32 in the past, with the 36 participants split into four seeded pots of nine for the draw.

Every team faces two teams from each of the four pots, one at home and one away. The first matches will be played on September 17, 18 and 19.

The two extra matchdays in the new league phase will take place in January, at the end of which the top eight clubs in the 36-team classification will advance directly to the last 16.

Those ranked between ninth and 24th place will go through to play a play-off round from which will emerge the remaining eight sides advancing to the last 16.

The bottom 12 in the league phase will be eliminated altogether, with no clubs parachuting down into the Europa League as in the past.

The Europa League and third-tier Conference League, the draws for which take place on Friday, will also now feature 36 clubs, although the latter competition will involve only six matchdays in the league phase.

In a match that might have been a test of Thiago Motta‘s credentials to take over Juventus, his Bologna team made a blazing start but collapsed at the end and drew 3-3 with the Turin giants on Monday. Former Italy midfielder Motta’s contract with Bologna, where the 41-year-old has been since 2022, expires at the end of the season. His team have been a revelation this season and are already qualified for next season’s Champions League. Monday’s draw preserved third place, ahead of Juventus on tiebreak.

Juventus playing their first match since Massimiliano Allegri was fired following a spectacular tantrum as his team won the Italian Cup last week, started in a daze.

After two minutes, Riccardo Calafiori side-footed into the roof of net as the ball dropped to him in space following a corner.

On 11 minutes, Argentinian Santiago Castro, a 19-year-old making his first Serie A start, headed in at the near post. The only challenge he had to survive was from teenage team-mate Kacper Urbanski, also eager to nod in from close range.

With Juventus seemingly uninterested in running or tackling, unmarked Jens Odgaard then smashed home a 13th-rebound but was deemed offside.

Juventus showed more bite after their half-time encounter with interim coach Paolo Montero, the former Uruguay defender who had been managing the club’s Under-19 team.

With the visitors pressing, Castro pinched the ball in midfield in the 53rd minute and launched a Bologna counter-attack. It finished with centre back Calafiori running in alone on goal and chipping Wojciech Szczesny.

After both coaches made five changes, Bologna imploded in five chaotic minutes.

Federico Chiesa pounced on an error by Jhon Lucumi to pull a goal back for Juventus after 76 minutes. 

Motta had taken off both goalscorers. Montero, it turned out, had sent on two. 

Substitute Arkadiusz Milik added the second for the visitors from a deflected free kick after 83 minutes. A minute later another replacement Kenan Yildiz skipped through the home defence and levelled.

Montero danced in the rain on the touchline.

He is in charge for the last two games of the season.

Motta has been rumoured for weeks to be joining Juve next season, with Allegri’s sacking on Friday only heightening the speculation.

“I haven’t decided, nor signed anything,” Motta told reporters ahead of  Monday night’s game.

“Next week I’ll sit down with the president (Joey Saputo) to take a decision together. Then we will make an announcement together.

Allegri was sent off in the final minutes of last Wednesday’s 1-0 Cup Final win against Atalanta for ranting at match officials and is also alleged to have manhandled threatened the chief editor of newspaper Tuttosport.

The 56-year-old won 12 trophies, including five Serie A titles, and reached two Champions League finals with Juventus over two spells as manager.