Remaining three participants of the TruckScout24 EHF FINAL4 2023, Barça, Paris Saint-Germain Handball and Barlinek Industria Kielce will be seeded in the first pot alongside THW Kiel, GOG and Telekom Veszprém HC when the draw for the Machineseeker EHF Champions League 2023/24 divides all 16 participants into two groups of eight on Tuesday 27 June.
The teams, which were approved by the EHF Executive Committee earlier this week will enter Tuesday’s draw in Vienna in three pots in order to make the draw more interesting and to avoid many allocations due to the country protection. The adjusted draw procedure will therefore see six teams in Pot 1 and five in Pot 2 and Pot 3 each.
Country protection will still be applied, therefore, the Pot 1 and Pot 2 teams from Hungary, France, Germany, Denmark and Poland will not meet their national league opponents in the group phase.
The group phase will be played in a round-robin format. After 14 rounds, the top two teams in each group will qualify directly for the quarter-finals, while the teams that finish in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth places will contest the play-offs. The lowest-ranked two clubs in each group will be eliminated from the competition at the end of the group phase.
The first round is scheduled for 13-14 September 2023.
Draw procedure
Step 1: 6 teams from Pot 1 drawn to six positions - A1, B1, A2, B2, A3, B3
Step 2: 5 teams from Pot 2 drawn to five positions out of these six - A4, B4, A5, B5, A6, B6 (one position will remain vacant)
Step 3: 5 teams from Pot 3 drawn to the remaining five positions - one from the previous step, A7, B7, A8, B8
Follow the draw live
The group phase draw will take place on Tuesday 27 June at 11:00 CEST in Vienna and will be streamed on EHFTV, the Home of Handball YouTube channel.
Machineseeker EHF Champions League 2023/24 group phase
POT 1
ESP - Barça
GER - THW Kiel
POL - Barlinek Industria Kielce
FRA - Paris Saint-Germain Handball
DEN - GOG
HUN - Telekom Veszprém HC
POT 2
GER - SC Magdeburg
POL - ORLEN Wisla Plock
FRA - Montpellier Handball
DEN – Aalborg Håndbold
HUN - OTP Bank – PICK Szeged
POT 3
POR - FC Porto
NOR - Kolstad Handball
SLO - RK Celje Pivovarna Lasko
MKD - HC Eurofarm Pelister
CRO - HC Zagreb
