Arsenal face Bayern; Manchester City against Barcelona in Women's Champions League

Manchester City will play holders Barcelona in the group stage of the Women's Champions League, while Katie McCabe and Arsenal can look forward to facing Bayern Munich.

Women's Super League champions Chelsea and Scottish title winners Celtic, who have Irish international Caitlin Hayes in their ranks, have been drawn in the same pool.

As well as Barca, Gareth Taylor's City will also face Austrian side St Polten and Sweden's Hammarby in Group D.

City on Thursday completed an 8-0 aggregate victory over Paris FC to secure a return to the competition - they will be involved for the first time since 2020-21, having been eliminated in the qualifying stages two years in a row, then fallen short of a European berth when they came fourth in the WSL in 2022-23. They finished second last season.

Chelsea and Celtic are in Group B, along with Real Madrid and Twente.

Chelsea won 14 major trophies under Emma Hayes but are yet to taste Champions League glory, going closest when they were runners-up in 2021.

In Sonia Bompastor, who succeeded Hayes over the summer, they are managed by the coach who guided Lyon to success in the competition the following year. She subsequently oversaw the French side being beaten by Barca in last season's final in Bilbao.

Celtic became the first team from Scotland to reach the group stages of the competition with a 2-0 win over Ukrainian side Vorskla Poltova on Thursday, Elena Sadiku's outfit triumphing 3-0 on aggregate.

Arsenal's opponents aside from Bayern in Group C will be Juventus and Norwegian team Valerenga.
Jonas Eidevall's side turned around their qualifier against Hacken to go through 4-1 on aggregate on Thursday. They were semi-finalists in 2022-23, before being knocked out in the qualifying rounds last