With the Premier League wrapping up on Sunday and both Manchester United and Chelsea qualifying for the Champions League, all group stage spots for next season’s UCL that come from domestic leagues have been finalized. 24 of the 32 group stage spots are clinched while the final eight will come from the playoff route after round of qualifying. Let’s take a look at what we know so far.
Two more spots in the group stage will go to the winner of this season’s Champions League, which you can see in August on CBS, as well as the winner of the Europa League.
In the event that the teams that win the tournaments are already qualified, we will see something similar to last season, when the third-place team in France was given direct qualification and others entered qualifying to occupy spots.
Man United started with it’s usual line up, Bruno Fernandes and Pogba manning the midfield with Nigeria’s Odion Ighalo reduced to a bench role once again. Kelechi Iheanacho started alongside Jamie Vardy for Leicester City as they aimed to pressure United’s fragile defence, and Leicester City sure looked the most assured out of both teams at the start of the match.
The first half was filled with nervy moments but still ended 0-0 with both coaches wary that all it could take to miss out on next season’s competition could be just a silly mistake.
The Reds finished a tight first half on top and Rashford comes close with a side-footed shot that went over the crossbar, after a spinning ball by Pogba deceived James Justin.
