The draws for the group stages of the Champions League were held in Monaco on Thursday, on a night when Spanish midfielder Andres Iniesta deservedly was crowned as the European Player of the Year.

As usually happens on such occasions, the eight groups as drawn left several clubs satisfied with the outcome, as they see a better opportunity to qualify to the knock-out stage because of the weak group they were drawn in, and others who were left ruing their bad luck because they were picked in more difficult combinations.

The question that always arises in such circumstances is the validity of the seeding system as it is at present. Football authorities think it is fair to place teams in different pots according to their rankings, but this always ends up leading to very easy groups and, at the end of the scale, very difficult groups.

For example, Real Madrid, the Spanish champions, were drawn in the toughest of the lot, as they will have to play against English champions Manchester City, Dutch champions Ajax and German champions Borussia Dortmund. On the other hand, English clubs Manchester United and Arsenal – with the latter being the only club of the top eight never to have won the European Cup – were drawn in very easy groups and are already looking forward to the second stage of the competition.

There are then a number of groups which are more or less balanced, with the outcome of the six rounds of matches quite unknown. As it happened, clubs like Juventus and Paris St Germain – who feared tough groups because they were in Pot 3 – ended up in much less difficult groups than others which were in Pot 1 and Pot 2 of the seedings.

The competition is set to start in the third week of September, and as usual this most lucrative European club competition will attract thousands to the stadia and millions in front of the TV. Last May, Chelsea became European champions for the first time in their history, becoming the first club from London to lift the trophy. It’s been more than two decades since a club managed to win the competition twice in a row, and Chelsea hope they will be able to do so.