Champions League draw to be held at gathering of European soccer elite amid UEFA's crisis with FIFA

MONACO (AP) — The Champions League draw will be held Thursday during a gathering of European soccer leaders who also have off-field politics also on their minds.

Two hours before the gala draw ceremony starts at 6 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) in Monaco, most of UEFA’s 55 member federations will meet to discuss the governance crisis provoked by FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s failed attempt to sell stakes in World Cup profits to private investors.

Chaired by UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin , it will be their first face-to-face meeting since the month-long turmoil started in global soccer.

Infantino is not expected in Monaco, where he used to host the Champions League draw when he served as UEFA’s general secretary until being elected in 2016 to lead FIFA. Infantino is up for reelection in March but UEFA has said it has no confidence in his leadership.

Speculation on who might one day replace Infantino often lands on someone who will have a front row seat at the draw: the president of Champions League title holder Paris Saint-Germain , Nasser al-Khelaïfi . He has yet to declare an interest in running.

PSG heads the 36-team Champions League lineup alongside a stellar group of contenders: record 15-time European champion Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and last season's finalist Arsenal.

Four newcomers will debut in this Champions League edition: Como from Italy, coached by Cesc Fabregas; LASK of Austria; Viking from Norway; and Azerbaijani champion Sabah, which was founded only in 2017.

Sabah coach Valdas Dambrauskas is already making headlines for his curious origin story in soccer. The money he won as a young contestant on TV quiz show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in his native Lithuania funded a trip to study coaching in England.

Another first this season is an African coach taking his team into the main phase. Former Manchester City and Barcelona star Yaya Touré guided Slovakian champion Slovan Bratislava through its qualifying playoff Wednesday.

Also on the agenda in Monaco are meetings for the influential European Football Clubs group, UEFA’s committee overseeing club competitions and a special session of most of UEFA’s 55 member federations.

The UEFA members will first formally sign off on withdrawing a threat to boycott FIFA competitions in response to Infantino’s secretive sell-off plan that intended to sell stakes in a new commercial subsidiary to investors led by Joshua Kushner.

UEFA’s draw software will allocate eight opponents to each team — four home games, four away — with two opponents taken from each seeding pot. Seeding is decided by ranking a team's European results over the past five years. Teams will not be paired with an opponent from their own country.

The first round of games is played Sept. 8-10 with the first six rounds played through December. The league phase resumes in January with the eighth and final round on Jan. 27.

The top eight teams in the final standings go direct to the round of 16 in March. Teams placed ninth to 24th enter the knockout playoffs in February to decide the other eight teams in the round of 16. Teams placed 25th to 36th are eliminated.

The 36 teams will share prize money of about 2.5 billion euros ($2.9 billion)

Pot 1: Paris Saint-Germain (France), Bayern Munich (Germany), Real Madrid (Spain), Liverpool (England), Inter Milan (Italy), Manchester City (England), Arsenal (England), Barcelona (Spain), Atletico Madrid (Spain).

Pot 2: Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Roma (Italy), Sporting Lisbon (Portugal), Aston Villa (England), Porto (Portugal), Manchester United (England), Club Brugge (Belgium), Real Betis (Spain), PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands).

Pot 3: Feyenoord (Netherlands), Lille (France), Napoli (Italy), Leipzig (Germany), Villarreal (Spain), Fenerbahce (Turkey), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine), Galatasaray (Turkey).

Pot 4: Slavia Prague (Czech Republic), Slovan Bratislava (Slovakia), Stuttgart (Germany), AEK Athens (Greece), LASK (Austria), Como (Italy), Lens (France), Viking (Norway), Sabah (Azerbaijan).

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