[1] The teams were drawn into eight groups of four, and played each other home-and-away in a round-robin format.
Partizan and Žilina became only the eleventh and twelfth teams in UEFA Champions League history to lose all six group stage matches.
[citation needed] The draw for the group stage was held in Monaco on 26 August 2010 at 18:00 CEST (UTC+2).
Based on this principle, the draw was controlled for clubs from the same association in order to split the teams evenly into the two sets of groups.
There were certain restrictions, e.g., teams from the same city (e.g. Milan and Internazionale, which also shared a stadium) did not play at home on the same matchday (UEFA tried to avoid teams from the same city playing at home on the same day or on consecutive days), and Russian teams did not play at home on the last matchday due to cold weather.