Pep Guardiola will return to Barcelona with Manchester City as well as tackling Scottish champions Celtic after being handed a tough Champions League draw.
The new City boss, who won the competition twice with Barcelona during a glittering four-year spell in charge at the Nou Camp, will face his old club in this year's group stage.
City, Barcelona and Celtic were drawn together in Group C at Thursday's draw in Monaco alongside German outfit Borussia Moenchengladbach.
Surprise Barclays Premier League winners Leicester came out in Group G with Porto, Club Brugge and FC Copenhagen while runners-up Arsenal will face Paris St Germain, Basle and Bulgarian side Ludogorets in Group A.
North London rivals Tottenham, returning to the Champions League for the first time since the 2010-11 season, will play CSKA Moscow, Bayer Leverkusen and Monaco in Group E.
City director of football Txiki Begiristain, also a former Barcelona executive, denied the draw was the worst possible for his side.
"It is not a nightmare because we are in a wonderful competition," Begiristain said. "We are really happy but it will be very tough.
"We were in the semi-final last season and we want to be there again. It is an amazing competition, an amazing group."
Not only will Guardiola be familiar with the Nou Camp, but many of his players will know the territory too.
City played the Catalans in the last 16 in 2014 and 2015, losing the ties on both occasions. The games will also mean a quick reunion for goalkeeper Claudio Bravo with his old club, following his move to City on Thursday.
City also played Moenchengladbach in the group stage last year, en route to the last four.
Leicester director of football Jon Rudkin said of the club's trips to Portugal, Belgium and Denmark: "These are strong teams. We are certainly looking forward to playing on this stage and this platform and we look forward to the games coming to Leicester."
Arsenal were pleased with their draw as they look to reach the knock-out stages yet again.
Club secretary David Miles said: "This is our 19th consecutive season in the Champions League and of those 19 years we have qualified from the group stage 16 times.
"We have good Champions League pedigree but of course recently we have met with Barcelona and Bayern Munich and unfortunately failed at that hurdle.
"It was nice to avoid those teams, in particular, and I think on reflection we are reasonably pleased with that draw."
Tottenham's draw also seemed relatively kind and in Monaco they will be facing a side they beat 4-1 at home in the Europa League group stage last season.
Elsewhere in the draw, holders Real Madrid were drawn with Borussia Dortmund, Sporting Lisbon and Legia Warsaw.
No team have defended the Champions League since its inception in 1992 but Real Madrid's Welsh forward Gareth Bale hopes his side can become the first to do so, with the final being staged in his home city of Cardiff.
"It would be amazing to experience a Champions League final in Cardiff," Bale said.
"It is obviously a difficult group but it always is in the Champions League. We fancy our chances to get through but we know there are going to be some difficult games."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here