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    Champions League draw has elite line-up, no new names

    AP – The Champions League draw will have no new names in the 32-team line-up after the last confirmed entry ended an unlikely run by a Norwegian team.

    Bodø/Glimt, which spent much of the past two decades in the Norwegian second division, had been hoping to cap its recent rise by joining Europe’s elite competition but lost in extra time to Dinamo Zagreb in the playoffs on Wednesday.

    Dinamo joined Rangers and Copenhagen, which also advanced through their playoffs to complete a group-stage line-up stacked with 14 former former champions who have won 56 of the 67 European Cup or Champions League titles.

    Seven more teams are previous beaten finalists. The elite group includes defending champion Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, who are still fighting Champions League organiser UEFA in the European Court of Justice for the right to form their own breakaway competition.

    The Champions League typically showcases at least one new face – Sheriff of Moldova last year, Italy’s Atalanta in 2019 – and had four debutants two years ago.

    Dinamo’s Bruno Petkovic scores on a bicycle kick. PHOTO: AP

    There is no such upstart this season, though some in Scotland would argue Rangers should count as a first-timer. A humiliating financial crisis 10 years ago saw the storied club liquidated and restart anew in the fourth tier of Scottish football.

    The Rangers name is now back in the Champions League after a 12-year absence, joining Glasgow rival Celtic in the group stage.

    Shakhtar Donetsk will be in the draw two days after playing its first competitive game – the opening day of a new domestic season in Ukraine – since Russia invaded its home country in February.

    Shakhtar’s entry was ultimately gifted from Zenit St Petersburg by UEFA’s ban on all Russian teams, but the Ukrainian club no longer has its core of Brazilian players and will be playing its home games in Warsaw.

    “It will be difficult to be equal to (Manchester) City, or Bayern or Liverpool. Maybe we will be lucky,” Shakhtar captain Taras Stepanenko said this week.

    Shakhtar hosted eventual winner Madrid in Kyiv last October, and the record 14-time European champion is playing a record-extending 26th straight season in the group stage.

    Madrid has advanced every time.

    The 32 teams from 15 different countries go into groups of four playing home-and-away round-robin games.

    Because the World Cup in Qatar starts November 20, these Champions League groups start early on September 6 and end five weeks sooner than usual.

    Six rounds will be played in just nine weeks before a three-month pause until the round of 16 starts February 14.

    Fixture congestion caused by the first World Cup played outside the European summer means the Champions League final in Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium is on June 10.

    That’s the latest scheduled final – not including the August title game in the pandemic-hit 2019-20 season – since the inaugural European Cup final on June 13, 1956.

    The Champions League is even more concentrated in western Europe – and not just because of the Russia ban. Teams from Greece and Turkey in south-eastern Europe all lost in the qualifying rounds.

    Only Shakhtar, Viktoria Plzeň and Dinamo Zagreb qualified from the old eastern Europe with Maccabi Haifa in Israel facing a 2,000-kilometre flight to its nearest potential opponent Napoli. Recent Champions League teams Dynamo Kyiv, Red Star Belgrade, Sheriff, Ferencváros and Qarabağ all lost in the qualifying rounds.

    It means hundreds of millions in prize money flows to clubs in the already wealthier leagues of western Europe.

    The 32 teams share about EUR2 billion in UEFA prize money.

    Each team gets a basic fee of EUR15.6 million, plus EUR2.8 million per win and EUR930,000 for each draw in the group stage. The extra EUR930,000 left over from each drawn game is pooled and shared among teams who won games. Payments increase through each knockout round.

    A fund of EUR600 million gets divided between clubs according to their place in a league table based on historical European titles and results in the past 10 years.

    The top-ranked “coefficient” team, Real Madrid, gets EUR36.4 million and lowest-ranked Maccabi Haifa gets just EUR1.14 million.

    Teams also get a share of their domestic broadcast rights deal.

    UEFA deducts some cash to help repay broadcasters for games lost in the 2019-20 edition.

    It all adds up to the eventual champion getting around EUR125 million in UEFA prize money.

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