2022–23 UEFA Champions League

The 2022–23 UEFA Champions League was the 68th season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 31st season since it was renamed from the European Champion Clubs' Cup to the UEFA Champions League.
The final was played at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, on 10 June 2023. The stadium was originally appointed to host the 2020 UEFA Champions League final, but both this and the 2021 editions, which had been subsequently re-allocated to the Atatürk, were moved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2023 final was contested by English club Manchester City and Italian club Inter Milan, with the former winning 1–0 via a second-half goal by Rodri, who was named man of the match by UEFA. For Manchester City, this was their first-ever European Cup, and first European trophy since 1970. Having earlier won the Premier league and FA Cup titles, they achieved a continental treble. As winners, Manchester City earned the right to play against Sevilla, the winners of the 2022–23 UEFA Europa League, in the 2023 UEFA Super Cup, as well as qualifying for both the 2023 and 2025 FIFA Club World Cups in Saudi Arabia and the United States, respectively.
Real Madrid were the defending champions, having won a record-extending fourteenth European Cup title in the previous edition, but they were eliminated by eventual champions Manchester City in the semi-finals.

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Association team allocation

A total of 78 teams from 53 of the 55 UEFA member associations participated in the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League. The association ranking based on the UEFA association coefficients was used to determine the number of participating teams for each association:

Associations 1–4 each had four teams qualify.
Associations 5–6 each had three teams qualify.
Associations 7–15 each had two teams qualify.
Associations 16–55 each had one team qualify.
The winners of the 2021–22 UEFA Champions League and 2021–22 UEFA Europa League were each given an additional entry if they did not qualify for the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League through their domestic league.

Association ranking

For the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League, the associations were allocated places according to their 2021 UEFA association coefficients, which took into account their performance in European competitions from 2016–17 to 2020–21.
Apart from the allocation based on the association coefficients, associations could have additional teams participating in the Champions League, as noted below:

– Additional berth for UEFA Europa League title holders

Distribution

The following is the access list for this season.
Due to the suspension of Russia for the 2022–23 European season, the following changes to the access list were made:

The champions of association 11 enter the group stage instead of the play-off round.
The champions of association 13 enter the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round.
The champions of association 15 enter the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
The champions of associations 18 and 19 enter the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.
The runners-up of associations 10 and 11 enter the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.

Since the Champions League title holders qualified via their domestic league, the following changes to the access list were made:

The champions of association 12 enter the group stage instead of the play-off round.
The champions of association 14 enter the play-off round instead of the third qualifying round.
The champions of association 16 enter the third qualifying round instead of the second qualifying round.
The champions of associations 20 and 21 enter the second qualifying round instead of the first qualifying round.

Teams

The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round:

TH: Champions League title holders
EL: Europa League title holders
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.: League positions of the previous season
Abd-: League positions of abandoned season as determined by the national association; all teams were subject to approval by UEFA

The second qualifying round, third qualifying round and play-off round were divided into Champions Path and League Path.
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Schedule

The schedule of the competition was as follows. All matches were played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays apart from the preliminary round final and the final. Scheduled kick-off times starting from the play-off round were 18:45 and 21:00 CEST/CET.
As the 2022 FIFA World Cup took place in Qatar between 20 November and 18 December 2022, the group stage commenced in the first week of September 2022 and concluded in the first week of November 2022 to make way for the World Cup.
The draws for the qualifying round started at 12:00 CEST/CET and were held at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland. The group stage draw took place in Istanbul, Turkey.

Group stage

The draw for the group stage was held on 25 August 2022. The 32 teams were drawn into eight groups of four. For the draw, the teams were seeded into four pots, each of eight teams, based on the following principles:

Pot 1 contained the Champions League and Europa League title holders, and the champions of the top six associations based on their 2021 UEFA country coefficients. Since the Champions League title holders, Real Madrid, were also the champions of Association 2, the champions of Association 7, Ajax, were seeded into Pot 1.
Pots 2, 3 and 4 contained the remaining teams, seeded based on their 2022 UEFA club coefficients.

Teams from the same association could not be drawn into the same group.
Eintracht Frankfurt made their debut appearance in the group stage after winning the 2021–22 UEFA Europa League and, as a result, this was the first time that five German clubs played in the group stage.
A total of 15 national associations were represented in the group stage. This season was the first since the 1995–96 edition in which a Turkish side failed to qualify for the group stage. It was also the first time since the 2007–08 season that two Scottish sides qualified for the group stage.