Celtic have put themselves in a commanding position to reach the Champions League proper — but the scale of the challenge awaiting them is already becoming clear.
🔵 UCL 2026/27 – projected league phase pots (as of 19 Aug)
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Martin O’Neill’s side produced an impressive performance to beat Austrian champions LASK 3-0 at Celtic Park on Wednesday night, leaving them just 90 minutes away from the league phase.
There is still a job to finish in Austria next week, but Celtic will be overwhelming favourites to progress from such a strong position and avoid a repeat of last season’s play-off disappointment.
Attention is therefore already beginning to turn towards what could await the Hoops should they complete the job.
With the Champions League play-offs now at their halfway stage, Football Meets Data has projected how the four pots could look based on the current state of each tie.
And Celtic are currently projected to land in Pot Four.
That would place O’Neill’s side among the bottom seeds alongside the likes of Slavia Prague, Slovan Bratislava and Como.
Pot One could contain European heavyweights such as Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, while Borussia Dortmund, AS Roma and Manchester United are among the teams projected for Pot Two.
Even Pot Three offers little respite, with Bodo/Glimt, Feyenoord and Napoli among the possible opponents.
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3 Comments
It’s not a dead cert yet.
Have seen too many away performances over the last 2 decades to take anything for granted.
LASK were a whisker away from scoring 2 or 3 goals this week.
That being said, if we are brave in Austria and don’t spend the game defending, then I’m sure we can carve out a goal or two, and maybe even win the game, and the tie outright.
THEN we can look at the seedings.
I’ve been reading about Celtic supporter’s mention Duran and making comments about that shit band Celtic supporters should boycott that le bon and his band way back in 80s he said they should take every Irish catholic and put them against the wall and shoot them they are dirty racist bastard’s
In the new format the seedings don’t matter as much as they used to in the old groups of 4.
Each team regardless of seeding plays 2 teams from each pot giving you the 8 games each team plays. Everyone plays 1 home and 1 away against the teams in each pot they are drawn against.
If you remember 2 years ago, we got a pretty favourable draw and got to the knockout round against Bayern. I remember Man city having a tougher draw than we had and they were a seeded pot 1 team.
Also teams from the same countries can’t play against each other in league phase 1 not until the knockout round. So this means you only get 1 team from each country in the big 5 leagues. The secret or luck of the draw is getting drawn the worst 2 teams in each pot as apposed to the best 2.