Celtic and Rangers have been cautioned to remain vigilant following UEFA’s announcement that, as a result of format changes, it will take “three or four hours” to manually arrange the Champions League group stage draw for the upcoming season.

Beginning with the upcoming season, UEFA will be redesigning all three of its men’s club tournaments. The 32-team Champions League group phase will be replaced with a larger one that will include 36 clubs and have existed since the 1999–2000 season. Every team will play eight different opponents in the forthcoming league round. This will reduce the number of meaningless games, match up the best teams much earlier than previously, and increase the significance of the knockout draw based on the teams’ final league positions.

The team that finishes in second place advances to the third qualifying round of the Champions League, while the winners of the Scottish Premiership will automatically qualify for the group stage the following season. Rangers lead fierce rivals Celtic by two points with nine games left in the season. The two teams will play each other twice more before the season ends.

Teams are typically chosen by hand from seeded pots, but Giorgio Marchetti, the deputy general secretary of UEFA, acknowledged that a completely manual draw will not be feasible. He estimated that, should the current process remain unchanged, the Champions League draw alone could require “three or four hours” and almost 900 balls.

UEFA has stated that the draw will be a “hybrid” event, meaning that some ball drawing would be done by hand in addition to some automated processes, even though the specific format is still being finalized. UEFA made it clear that all computerized components will still undergo independent verification to prevent accusations of draw manipulation or finger-pointing.

Except in extremely rare situations, teams from the same nation will not be allowed to play together until the new knockout round, which will be contested by the teams who finished ninth through twenty-four in the league phase. From the last 16 onward, UEFA will implement a tennis-style seeding system, meaning that the teams that place first and second in the league phase will be drawn into different halves and will not be able to play each other until the final.

Two European Performance Spots (EPS) are set aside in the league phase for teams from the nations that combined for the greatest results in the previous season’s European campaign. Since Italy and Germany presently hold both positions, the fifth-place teams in each of those leagues—RB Leipzig and Roma, respectively—would receive the EPS.

Since England trails Germany by one spot, Manchester United may find itself in the unique position of needing to hope that their fierce rivals Manchester City and Liverpool win the Champions League and Europa League, respectively, in order to potentially host a fifth Champions League.

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