The newly introduced Champions League format has handed Liverpool a challenging draw while Arsenal received a comparatively favorable one.

On Thursday evening, the Gunners, Reds, Aston Villa, and Manchester City discovered their fates for the 2024/25 season of Europe’s premier club competition. Fans across the continent watched with intrigued bewilderment as the fixtures for the newly complicated 32-team league were unveiled over nearly an hour.

Italian goalkeeping icon Gianluigi Buffon drew the teams from a hat, while a seemingly disinterested Cristiano Ronaldo operated a magic button to randomly assign each team to one of eight groups.

Liverpool fans might be grumbling about Ronaldo and his supercomputer after their team received what is arguably the toughest draw. Under the management of Arne Slot, Liverpool will face challenging away games against AC Milan, LaLiga’s Girona, PSV Eindhoven, and RB Leipzig. At Anfield, they will host Real Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen, Lille, and Bologna.

In contrast, Arsenal’s draw is significantly less daunting. The Gunners will travel to Italy to face Inter Milan and Atalanta and also visit Girona and Sporting Lisbon. They will have home games against Shakhtar Donetsk, GNK Dinamo, Monaco, and Paris Saint-Germain.

Manchester City’s fixtures include away matches against Juventus, Sporting Lisbon, Slovan Bratislava, and Paris Saint-Germain, with home games against Inter Milan, Club Brugge, Feyenoord, and Sparta Prague.

Aston Villa will travel to RB Leipzig, Club Brugge, Young Boys, and Monaco, and will host Bayern Munich, Juventus, Bologna, and Celtic at Villa Park.

The 2024/25 season marks the start of a new format for Europe’s top club competition, expanding to 36 teams and replacing the traditional group stage with a single league format. Each team will play eight matches—four home and four away—against opponents from the four seeding pots.

The top eight teams will advance directly to the last 16, while teams finishing between 9th and 24th will compete in a two-legged playoff. Teams that finish 25th or lower will be eliminated and will not drop into the Europa League. Thus, eight teams will have to play ten games to reach the last 16, compared to the previous six.

Arsenal reached the quarter-finals last season but were knocked out by Bayern Munich with a 3-2 aggregate. Manchester City also exited at the quarter-final stage, losing to Real Madrid on penalties after a 4-4 aggregate draw.

Aston Villa and Liverpool were absent from last season’s Champions League. Villa, having qualified for the competition with a fourth-place Premier League finish, were eliminated from the Europa Conference League semi-finals by Olympiacos. Liverpool, who played in the Europa League, were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Atalanta, the eventual tournament winners.