Chelsea will play the Champions League newcomers Benfica subsequent month for a spot within the final 16 on their return to the competitors after a 12 months’s absence.
Emma Hayes’s workforce didn’t qualify for final season’s event, having completed third within the league behind Arsenal and Manchester Metropolis, however have twice reached the semi-finals, dropping to Wolfsburg in 2018 and Lyon in 2019.
Manchester Metropolis, additionally twice semi-finalists, will play the Swedish aspect Gothenburg. Metropolis have been knocked out by Atlético Madrid prior to now two seasons, within the final 16 final season and a spherical earlier in 2019.
Probably the most attention-grabbing tie of the spherical is between the holders, Lyon, and Juventus.
The Italian champions have didn’t progress past the final 32 of their two makes an attempt of their three-year historical past. Lyon have received the competitors a document 5 instances in a row and 7 instances in whole, and their Norwegian forward Ada Hegerberg is the competitors’s all-time prime scorer with 53 objectives. In August Lyon defeated Wolfsburg 3-1 within the last of a stunted single-leg competitors in San Sebastian.
The Scottish champions, Glasgow Metropolis, defeated the Icelandic workforce Valur on penalties, following a 1-1 attract qualifying, to earn a tie in opposition to Sparta Prague.
The ties will happen over two legs on 9-10 and 15-16 December with the seeded workforce enjoying the second leg at residence.
This 12 months’s draw for final 32 had a barely completely different format, with unseeded groups and seeded groups divided into 4 teams based mostly on geographical areas to restrict the space travelled in the course of the pandemic. The ultimate will happen on the 16 Could in Gothenburg.
Subsequent season’s competition will be expanded to incorporate a gaggle stage which may also enable for the third-place finisher within the Ladies’s Tremendous League to enter via qualifiers.
