With the league phase of the UEFA Champions League done and dusted, it's time for the business end of the competition. What started as a league of 36 has been whittled down to 24, with 12 teams dumped out of the competition at the initial phase. The top-8 teams in the League have progressed straight to the round of 16, while teams ranked between 9th and 24th in the league phase table have a two-legged play-off to navigate in February. Among those clubs are both of last season's finalists, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund, as well as winners Manchester City.
After City finished 22nd in the league phase, one position behind Celtic, the British duo were paired with the sides who finished 11th and and 12th, the 15 times winners Real Madrid and six times champions Bayern Munich. That means that both City and Celtic will face one of those European giants in February's playoff, with Friday's draw determining which one. The draw will also confirm where the sides who have progressed straight to the last 16 fit into bracket, with the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal and Aston Villa all discovering which playoff match their next opponents will come from, as well as the path their potential quarter-final and semi-final opponents will follow too.
Teams are paired by their final position, in order e. Of each pair, teams will be drawn into opposite halves of the bracket. For instance, 11th Real Madrid and 12th Bayern Munich will split off and cannot play each other until the final. Before the draw, paired teams will have two possible opponents.
The eight unseeded teams are drawn first into a position in the bracket. This starts with 23rd and 24th, and moves down to 17th and 18th. In each case the first team drawn goes into the first half of the bracket, meaning the other club in the pair goes into the second half. The draw then moves on to the seeded teams, continuing with 15th and 16th down to ninth and 10th.
Again, the first team drawn goes into the first half of the bracket - which automatically creates a knockout playoff round fixture - and so on with the other paired team into the second half.
