PSG to play Man City and Barcelona in the Champions League main phase

Barcelona's Fermin Lopez, left, celebrates after scoring his side's fifth goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match between Elche and Barcelona in Elche, Spain. (AP )

MONACO, Aug 27 (AP): Two-time defending champion Paris Saint-Germain will host Manchester City and travel to Barcelona in the Champions League main phase this season, after the 36-team draw was made Thursday.

PSG has won three straight visits to Barcelona - including a 2-1 win in the league phase last October - since imploding in the famous 6-1 loss in March 2017 that is known as the "Remontada” game.

The French champion again plays Aston Villa after a Super Cup win this month, then faces Champions League newcomer Como, coached by Cesc Fabregas, in an eight-game slate that starts in two weeks.

Real Madrid will host Inter Milan and make two trips to London, at Arsenal and against Shakhtar Donetsk. Ukraine’s champion will play home games at Stamford Bridge, where Madrid's returning coach, José Mourinho, was beloved by Chelsea fans during two title-winning spells.

Barcelona will host two English clubs - Man City and Europa League winner Villa - plus its former player Fabregas with Como. A long trip to Azerbaijan awaits them as they face debutant Sabah in Baku.

Arsenal, last year's beaten finalist, will host Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, and Sabah, and travel to Bayern Munich.

Bayern got a second English opponent, with a trip to Manchester United, plus two Norwegian opponents, hosting Bodø/Glimt and visiting Viking. Bayern will also face Atletico Madrid, whose Metropolitano Stadium will host the final next May.

Liverpool got trips to Inter Milan and Fenerbahce in what looked like one of the more favorable eight-game slates. Atletico will again come to Anfield, where Liverpool won 3-2 last September.

Atletico will also play both Norwegian teams and is one of four teams heading into the Arctic Circle to play on Bodø/Glimt’s artificial turf. Dortmund, Lille, and newcomer LASK will also travel to the remote fishing town, and one team must make the trip in January.

Sabah will also host Dortmund, Napoli, and Slavia Prague. Fans also have two long trips from Azerbaijan to England to face Arsenal and Man United.

Como has a second trip to Spain, to play Real Betis as well as Barcelona, and will welcome PSG and Man United to its picture-postcard lakeside stadium home.

Four newcomers will debut in this Champions League edition: Como from Italy, coached by Cesc Fabregas; LASK from Austria; Viking from Norway; and Azerbaijani champion Sabah, founded only in 2017.

Sabah coach Valdas Dambrauskas is already making headlines for his curious origin story in soccer. The money he won as a young contestant on the TV quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in his native Lithuania funded a trip to study coaching in England.

Another first this season is an African coach taking his team into the main phase. Former Manchester City and Barcelona star Yaya Touré guided Slovakian champion Slovan Bratislava through its qualifying playoff on Wednesday. Slovan will visit PSG and host Inter Milan.

UEFA’s draw software allocated eight opponents to each team - four home games, four away - with two opponents taken from each seeding pot. UEFA decided seeding by ranking a team's European results over the past five years. Teams could not be paired with an opponent from their own country.

The first round of games is played Sept. 8- 10, with the first six rounds played through December. The league phase resumes in January, with the eighth and final round on Jan. 27.

The top eight teams in the final standings go directly to the round of 16 in March. Teams placed ninth to 24th enter the knockout playoffs in February to decide the other eight teams in the round of 16. Teams placed 25th to 36th are eliminated.

The 36 teams will share prize money of about 2.5 billion euros ($2.9 billion)