NYON, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 Title holder Barcelona’s defense of the Women\u2019s Champions League will include hosting Arsenal in a rematch of the 2025 final won by the London club after the 18-team draw was made Friday.<\/p>\n
Barcelona faces a season of transition after two-time Ballon d\u2019Or winner Alexia Putellas and other storied Spain players left in the offseason, though got a favorable slate of six opponents that starts later this month.<\/p>\n
Also hosted in Barcelona are Paris FC and Servette, while there are trips to play at Bayern Munich, Roma and HB K\u00f8ge of Denmark.<\/p>\n
Arsenal will host eight-time champion OL Lyonnes, Benfica and K\u00f8ge, and also visit Paris FC and Inter Milan.<\/p>\n
OL Lyonnes, which was the beaten finalist in May, goes to Arsenal, Juventus and Servette, and will host Chelsea, Europa Cup winner H\u00e4cken and Inter Milan.<\/p>\n
English champion Manchester City will host Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Austria Vienna, while traveling to face Bayern, H\u00e4cken and Inter.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid hosts both Paris clubs plus Inter, with away games at Bayern, Roma and Man City.<\/p>\n
The six rounds of the league phase start Sept. 22 and are played through Dec. 16.<\/p>\n
The top four in the 18-team standings in December will go direct to the quarterfinals starting in March. Fifth to 12th in the standings enter the knockout playoffs in February.<\/p>\n
The final is played in Poland\u2019s national stadium in Warsaw in late May.<\/p>\n
The 18 Champions League clubs will share a UEFA prize money fund of 18.2 million euros ($21.2 million), with each guaranteed 505,000 euros ($587,000).<\/p>\n
There is 5.6 million euros ($6.5 million) on offer in the Women\u2019s Europa Cup, the second-tier competition which debuted last year won by H\u00e4cken.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NYON, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 Title holder Barcelona’s defense of the Women\u2019s Champions League will include hosting Arsenal in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3447,92,21885,1562,1558,30194],"class_list":["post-81131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-alexia-putellas","tag-barcelona","tag-denmark","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-womens-champions-league-barcelona-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}