West Ham United will not be facing any of the following eight teams in the Europa League group stage draw.
The wait is finally over and West Ham will find out who their group stage opponents will be for this season’s Europa League.
UEFA will be starting the draw, which is being held in Istanbul, from 11am GMT and West Ham are in pot three of four pots of seeded teams.
Teams are divided into four pots based on their UEFA club coefficients. West Ham’s coefficient is 20.113 – putting the Hammers 19th in the seeded rankings.
One team from each of the four seeding pots will be drawn into the eight groups, A–H.
No team can play a club from their own association meaning West Ham will not face Leicester – who the Hammers beat 4-1 last time out – in the group stage.
West Ham are in pot three.
And that means along with Leicester (pot two) West Ham will not face any of the clubs in the same pot as them (pot three).
So West Ham cannot be in the same group as Leicester or Dimitri Payet’s Marseille, Manuel Pellegrini’s Real Betis, Fenerbahce, PSV Eindhoven, Ludogorets, David Moyes’s old club Real Sociedad or Spartak Moscow.
If West Ham make it to the final of the competition they will be playing for a place in next season’s Champions League at Seville’s Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium.
West Ham fans will not learn the full fixture list for the group stage until Friday evening once UEFA has taken into account the calendars of participating clubs and stakeholders.
How does the group stage work?
Teams in each group face each other home and away, with the same sides meeting on Matchdays 1 and 5, or Matchdays 2 and 6, or Matchdays 3 and 4.
The top three clubs will continue their European campaigns in the new year:
- Group winners progress to the round of 16.
- Group runners-up go into the new knockout round play-offs, where they will face the third-placed UEFA Champions League teams for places in the round of 16.
- Third-placed sides transfer to the UEFA Europa Conference League knockout round play-offs.
How can West Ham fans watch the draw?
The draw will be streamed live on UEFA.com.
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