The 2022/22 edition of UEFA Champions League (UCL) is set to kick off this week. Thirty two clubs across Europe will begin their quests for the trophy on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 6 and 7 respectively. Interestingly, these clubs are spread across fifteen countries. Let us take a look at these countries and how they are represented in the group stage of the tournament....CONTINUE READING
The country with most representatives in this competition is Germany . These clubs are the Bundesliga Champions, Bayern Munich; 2021/22 Europa Leagu winners; Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig complete the quintet from the Eastern Europe nation.
England, Spain and Italy have four outfits each in the tournament. The English teams in the competition are the 2021/22 Club World winners, Chelsea; 2021/22 UCL runners up, Liverpool as well as Manchester City and Tottenham. Reigning UCL champions, Real Madrid are the chief Spanish representatives. They are accompanied by Atlético Madrid, Barcelona and Sevilla. The Italian sides that will feature in this edition are Inter Milan, Juventus, AC Milan and Napoli.
Three clubs will fight the flag of Portugal in the UCL this year. The first among them is FC Porto followed by Benfica. Sporting CP completes the list. Interestingly, the first two of them have won the competition twice each while the third is yet to get to the final.
French Ligue 1 is regarded as one of the top five leagues in Europe but the country is represented by only two clubs this year – Olympic Marseille, Paris Saint-Germain. Scotland has the same number as France with Celtic and Rangers going into the competition.
The eight other countries in the competition will be represented by one club each. These include Ajax (Netherlands), Salzburg (Austria), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine) and Club Brugge (Belgium). Others are Czech club, Viktoria Plzeň as well as FC Copenhagen, Dinamo Zagreb and Maccabi Haifa from Denmark, Croatia and Israel respectively.
