The Champions League play-offs start tonight, and Fenerbahce vs Lyon is the tie to stay up for

Seven places in the Champions League league phase are still unclaimed, and the fight for the first three of them starts tonight. The play-off round first legs kick off at 00:30 IST on Wednesday morning, which is 21:00 on Tuesday evening across most of Europe.

Twenty-nine clubs are already in. The other seven come out of these ties, and the teams that lose them do not disappear: a defeated side in the Champions League play-offs drops straight into the Europa League league phase.

Tonight’s three

Fenerbahce vs Lyon is the one worth the alarm clock. It is the only league path tie on Tuesday, meaning both clubs arrived through their league positions rather than as national champions. Fenerbahce have spent their summer shopping in Europe: Romelu Lukaku signed from Napoli for a reported 6 million euros this month, four weeks after Mason Greenwood arrived from Marseille in a 39 million euro deal. Lyon got here the hard way, losing 2-1 at Sparta Praha in the third qualifying round and then winning the return 3-0.

The other two ties are champions path. Levski Sofia host AEK Athens having already put out Kairat Almaty, the Kazakh club who reached the league phase last season and made the longest journey in the competition’s history to do it. GNK Dinamo, 7-1 aggregate winners over Kauno Zalgiris in the last round, are at home to Viking of Norway.

Wednesday’s four

Celtic vs LASK is the pick of the second night. LASK won the Austrian league and cup last season, the club’s first trophies since 1964-65, and are the rare Austrian champions who come from neither Vienna, Salzburg nor Graz. Celtic come in as Scottish champions.

N.E.C. host Bodo/Glimt in the other league path tie, and both got through ties that went to the wire. The Dutch side beat Olympiacos in extra time in the second leg. Bodo/Glimt edged Union Saint-Gilloise 6-5 on aggregate. Slovan Bratislava play Celje, and Hapoel Beer-Sheva face Sabah of Azerbaijan.

Every kick-off across both nights is at 21:00 CET, so Wednesday’s four also land at 00:30 IST, on Thursday morning in India.

What happens next

The second legs are on 25 and 26 August. The league phase draw is on Thursday 27 August at 21:30 IST, and the seven winners go into the pot alongside the 29 clubs that never had to qualify.

Qualifying has already produced a couple of results worth keeping. Sabah lost 2-1 in Denmark to Aarhus and then won the return 4-0. Kairat Almaty, who hosted Real Madrid in last season’s league phase, went out to Levski across two legs without scoring in either. Aarhus, beaten by Sabah, are now in the Europa League play-off, where they visit Benfica on Thursday.

None of the seven ties is a formality, and none of the losers is finished for the season. That is the point of the current format, and it is why a Tuesday night in Sofia or Zagreb is worth more than it looks.

Get across the European qualifiers