Viana excited by Champions League draw and return of De Bruyne | OneFootball

Director of football Hugo Viana is excited by City’s Champions League draw and is looking forward to welcoming Kevin De Bruyne back to the Etihad Stadium.

City discovered our eight opponents for the 2025/26 Champions League when the draw was made on Thursday.

We will face two away trips to Spain to play Real Madrid and Villarreal as well as visiting Monaco and Bodo/Glimt in Norway.

German sides Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen will come to the Etihad along with Turkish Club Galatasaray, as well as De Bruyne’s new team Napoli.

The Italian champions will be another big test for Pep Guardiola’s side among a series of difficult games, but Viana is delighted the Club legend will be returning.

“Every team wants to be in the Champions League so we are really happy and proud at the same time,” he said.

“There are a lot of good games. The positive thing is that we avoided long trips. It is positive because of the amount of games that we have.

“From September it will be a lot of games and it will be a challenge also for us, so without having the long trips is a positive.

“We are going to face some very good teams like Real Madrid - it is the fifth [consecutive] year that we will play against them.

“It is also really positive to have Kevin De Bruyne at home, our legend. It will be very positive to see him again.

"I think Pep and all of his colleagues will be really happy to receive him and our fans will be also. It will be very exciting and we will be very happy to see him again."

This campaign will be the first since Viana took over from Txiki Begiristain and he said he is excited by the role.

"It has been a pleasure, a learning, a lot of learning moments for me,” he added.

“Of course, I am very excited to be in the Premier League also with this huge, huge Club and to have this first Champions League experience with Manchester City, it is always a pleasure."

The order in which the sides were drawn are not necessarily the order in which we will play the fixtures with the dates and times to be confirmed on Saturday.

We will have the information on mancity.com and official app as soon as they are confirmed.