Create your own Group of Death with this Champions League draw simulator

The full field for the 2017-18 Champions League group stage draw isn’t fully settled yet, but that hasn’t stopped people from starting to simulate what the draw might look like.

Just like last season, a 2017-18 Champions League draw simulator has appeared online and gives fans an opportunity to get a sneak preview of just how bad — or good — a group Spurs could end up with. Spurs are in Pot 3, which gives them a pretty good chance of landing at least one — and possibly two — monster team in their group.

While the pots aren’t finalized, the simulator fills out the roster with the teams most likely to make the group stages. Just for fun, I did two simulations to see where Spurs landed.

Whoof. That’s pretty bad. Benfica isn’t the worst of the Pot 1 teams, but drawing Barcelona in the group stages as well as one of the toughest Pot 4 teams in Roma would make this group a huge challenge to get out of. About the only way that could be worse is if it had drawn Leipzig instead of Roma. Not great.

Not much better! Celtic is at least not especially great, but Bayern and PSG are not teams you want to have to beat in order to advance to the knock-out stages. Don’t look at the recent ICC friendly in Orlando as evidence to the contrary — PSG is a fantastic side, and Bayern is still Bayern.

There’s the possibility that Spurs could land an easier group — Spartak, Sevilla and Copenhagen would be nice — but the odds are pretty good that Spurs are going to land in a pretty strong group. Just remember that the group will be especially strong precisely BECAUSE Spurs are in it, so that’s nice.

What did you come up with in your draw? Post them in the comments.