Twice now, the Champions League draw has handed Real Madrid the same envelope, and twice it has ended the same way. A trip to Anfield in 2024-25, beaten. A trip to Anfield in 2025-26, beaten again. For a club that has won the competition 15 times, no away ground in the new league-phase era has been less hospitable.
This season, it cannot happen a third time — and that is not a prediction. It is written into UEFA’s regulations, and Liverpool themselves have confirmed it before a single ball has been drawn.
Why Real Madrid Cannot Be Drawn At Anfield
In a statement on their official website, publicised on Wednesday and carried by Madrid Universal, Liverpool explained that UEFA’s rules prevent them from being drawn at home to Los Blancos for a third consecutive Champions League league phase.
The relevant clause was built into the format when it was introduced. UEFA’s Club Competitions Committee, in wording reproduced by Bernabéu Digital, determined an additional condition that may apply to the 2026-27 draw: no individual fixture between the same two teams may be repeated in the same competition, with the same team at home, for three consecutive seasons.
Madrid visited Anfield in the 2024-25 league phase. They visited Anfield again in 2025-26. Liverpool at home to Real Madrid has therefore used up its two seasons, and the administration will adapt the draw conditions accordingly.
What the rule does not do is keep the two clubs apart. Real Madrid and Liverpool can still be paired in the league phase — the fixture would simply have to be played at the Santiago Bernabéu, with home advantage going to José Mourinho’s side.
Two Nights On Merseyside Madrid Would Rather Forget
The relief is easier to understand with the results attached. In 2024-25, per Madrid Universal, Madrid lost 2-0 on Merseyside to goals from Alexis Mac Allister and Cody Gakpo. A season later the draw sent them straight back, and Mac Allister struck again with a second-half header to settle it.
Two visits, two defeats, no goals scored. Whatever else the draw produces — and a league phase of eight opponents can produce plenty — one specific assignment that has cost Los Blancos points in each of the past two seasons has been ruled out in advance. In a format where every point in the table decides seeding and survival, that matters more than it sounds.
No Anfield Homecoming For Trent Or Konaté
There is a subplot the rule quietly defuses. Real Madrid have signed two Liverpool players in two summers as effectively free agents: Trent Alexander-Arnold a year ago and Ibrahima Konaté this summer, the latter already looking like one of the signings of Mourinho’s rebuild.
Both would have walked back into a stadium where the reception is not guaranteed to be warm. Alexander-Arnold has spoken publicly about the abuse that followed his exit, a subject this site covered when he addressed it in a newspaper interview this month. If the clubs are drawn together in the league phase now, that particular night happens in Madrid, in front of a Bernabéu crowd that will treat both of them as their own.
One caveat worth keeping: the condition covers the league phase. Nothing in it prevents a knockout tie later in the season sending Real Madrid back to Anfield, where the fixture list is decided by results rather than by draw restrictions.
One Fewer Nightmare Before The Draw
With the league-phase draw still to come, Madrid go into it already knowing one thing that will not be in their calendar. It is a small edge and an oddly technical one — a committee decision rather than anything won on the pitch. But after two seasons of the same trip and the same result, Madridistas will take it.
