Manchester City face PSG in opening fixtures of new-look Champions League

Holders Real Madrid to take on Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, among others

Former Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, left, and Cristiano Ronaldo during the Champions League league phase draw in Monaco. AP

Manchester City will face Inter Milan, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain in their eight opening fixtures in the first stage of the new-look Champions League.

Club Brugge, Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon, Sparta Prague and Slovan Bratislava are the other five opponents of Pep Guardiola's side.

The revamped format sees all 36 teams forming a single league, with each side playing four home games and four away.

The top eight will go straight into the last 16 while a round of play-offs will decide the other eight teams.

Title holders Real Madrid will face Liverpool away and host Borussia Dortmund in a repeat of last season's final in the league stage, the draw for which took place in Monaco on Thursday.

Madrid, who have signed France superstar Kylian Mbappe since winning a record-extending 15th European Cup, will also notably play AC Milan at home and will go to Atalanta.

Real beat last season's Europa League winners Atalanta in the Super Cup in Warsaw earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Liverpool were given fixtures against holders Madrid, Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen, AC Milan, Lille, PSV Eindhoven, Bologna and Girona.

Also, Aston Villa will face a battle of Britain against Celtic and a nostalgic visit from Bayern Munich in their debut Champions League campaign.

At the draw in Monte Carlo, the revamped competition threw up a showdown with the Scottish champions and a repeat of Villa's finest hour, their European Cup victory over Bayern in 1982.

The new-style draw was made at a gala ceremony in a beach-side concert hall with football greats Cristiano Ronaldo and Gianluigi Buffon in attendance.

After each team’s ball was picked by Buffon from one of four bowls - seeded according to results in the past five years of European club competitions - Ronaldo pressed a button to reveal the opponents from each of the four seeding pots.

The new format was created by Uefa under pressure from influential clubs who wanted more guaranteed games and a wider variety of high-profile opponents.

The new league phase will have 144 total games compared to 96 in the group stage last season. By also adding a new knockout playoffs round in February, the competition overall has 189 games instead of 125.

The 36 teams will share a prize money fund of at least $2.8 billion, a raise of 25 per cent on last season.

The full fixture list with match dates and kick-off times will be announced on Saturday.

The new format was introduced against the backdrop of the threat by Europe's biggest clubs to break away and form their own Super League.

Uefa are also hoping the format can be a solution to the problem of competitive imbalance in the sport which was making the group stage more predictable.

"The new format will introduce a better competitive balance between all the teams, with the possibility for each team to play opponents of a similar competitive level throughout the league phase," the governing body said.