As in previous years, the Champions League Group Stage draw and the UEFA awards ceremony were held at the same time.
The awards ceremony began immediately, with the Best Goalkeeper award presented first.
Courtois, the Costa Rican goalkeeper who played for Real Madrid, received the honor. He had defeated his own teammate, the Belgian Real Madrid goalkeeper Courtois, which left everyone feeling helpless.
Real Madrid had two of the very best goalkeepers in the world at the same time. What an extravagance that was!
After the Best Goalkeeper award was presented, the draw for the first-pot teams began.
According to the draw rules, the first pot was actually the least suspenseful, because it consisted of the defending Champions League champions and the league champions, assigned to eight different groups as seeded teams.
There were two interesting points among the eight teams. First, beginning this season, the Europa League champions would also receive a seeded-team spot. Atletico Madrid became the first team to win the Europa League and earn a seeded place in the Champions League Group Stage.
The other was Lokomotiv Moscow, the champions of the Russian Premier League. This team had only 22.5 European coefficient points and originally could only have been placed in the fourth pot, but it had now been promoted to the seeded teams by virtue of winning the league title.
That was also the team many people hoped to draw, because getting Lokomotiv Moscow would undoubtedly mean less competitive pressure.
Yang Yang also hoped Ajax could draw Lokomotiv Moscow. After all, if they encountered this weak side in the first pot, Ajax would have great confidence in beating them after defeating Dynamo Kyiv.
Then, even if they faced strong teams such as Dortmund, Manchester United, Porto, Tottenham Hotspur, and Naples in the second pot,