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As Thursday’s Champions League group stage draw evolved, it became pretty clear that there were some groups that were pretty darn tough with others being pretty darn ... meh.
Juventus have found themselves in the first of those groupings.
Just as we saw in last season’s Champions League quarterfinals, it will be a meeting of European heavyweights. Juventus’ biggest test in the group stage, at least when it comes to the opponents on paper, will be Spanish giant Barcelona. There are, obviously, two other members of Group D, with Olympiakos and Sporting Lisbon rounding out the Juventus-centered draw interests of us all.
But the headliner is obviously the rematch between the side that Juventus beat on aggregate in last season’s quarterfinals.
Confirmation of our @ChampionsLeague group.#UCLdraw pic.twitter.com/ywS9Yhwq96
— JuventusFC (@juventusfcen) August 24, 2017
And last time I checked, Leo Messi still hasn’t scored a goal on Gigi Buffon.
I would be totally okay with things staying that way.
(Oh, and Paulo Dybala doing Paulo Dybala things again when Barcelona make the trip to Turin.)
As of this post going live, there has been no fixture dates announced just yet. When they do, we shall try and update them as quickly as possible. Lord knows with a tough yet winnable group that having a game against Barcelona late in the return fixtures will be quite the massive task with first place likely up for grabs.
Here are the groups in full:
The complete 2017/18 UEFA Champions League Group Stage draw!
— #UCLdraw (@ChampionsLeague) August 24, 2017
Most exciting group?#UCLdraw pic.twitter.com/Jf9ebJrJ9t
Juventus getting drawn against Barcelona in the group stage brought a laugh out of a certain Francesco Totti.
We’ll see who’s actually laughing about it soon enough.