Favourites Manchester City have fatigue fears going into Champions League draw

The most glamorous tournament in club football, as the Uefa Champions League likes to think of itself, stages its annual appetiser on Thursday afternoon, the draw for its group stage. Amid the familiar red-carpet rituals, many old habits will be broken.

The European Cup, as it still gets called, has one important novelty, a fresh title-holder in Manchester City. It has notable absentees among the challengers. As the names of clubs are drawn from bowls into their eight groups of four, there will be no mention of usual regulars such as Liverpool, Juventus, Chelsea or Ajax, who all fell short of qualifying.

For the first time in two decades, the competition’s starting grid has no place for either of the two players who left the 21st century’s biggest mark on the competition.

Lionel Messi, four times a winner, and Cristiano Ronaldo, with his five gold medals, both now play outside Uefa’s orbit. As that illustrious pair keep distant watch on how a new Champions League season unfolds, they cannot help but think the equivalent North American and Asian tournaments they, as figureheads for Inter Miami and Al Nassr, are involved in are moving in closer step to Europe’s Big Cup.

They are entitled to ask how long, in the changing landscape of club football, the Uefa Champions League, a huge global broadcast phenomenon, will keep its status at club football’s summit? In the summer of 2025, an expanded Club World Cup, with 32 teams involved, will be launched. The various continental tournaments being played out in the coming season represent chances for more clubs, from more corners of the game, to be part of this ambitious, Fifa-run show.

It is plausible that a 38-year-old Messi could be there in 2025, in his Miami jersey, if he