Passports At The Ready

Last updated : 30 August 2007 By Ed
United, Arsenal, Chelsea and the vermin are all seeded for today's UEFA Champions League draw for the group stage.

The other seeds are Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Inter.

Before the draw UEFA are set to announce changes to the competition's format.

UEFA president Michel Platini is expected to give details of his plans to open up the Champions League to wider competition, specifically by giving domestic cup winners an opportunity to make it into the 32-team group phase.

It is understood that his plans would have 16 cup winners from Europe's leading countries in a qualifying competition for four places in the group stage of the Champions League. This qualifying event would be run in parallel to a qualifying competition based on domestic league positions for 12 other places, to join the 16 teams who qualify automatically.

UEFA general secretary David Taylor said: "The competition is the ultimate stage for European club football and we are looking at the access list arrangements to see if we can improve the qualifying routes which might allow the opportunity to broaden the geographic spread of this competition.

"We are having a big discussion about this at the Professional Football strategy board on Friday. The idea is that winners qualify for competitions and that's a good principle."

Taylor also made it clear that only cup winners would be allowed to enter the Champions League qualifying process - currently runners-up can go into the UEFA Cup if the winners have already qualified through their league.

Under the proposals, if as happened in England last season Chelsea were FA Cup winners and had already qualified automatically then the fourth-placed side - in this case Arsenal - would have to try to qualify through the 'cup' route.