Hamburg have made a promising start to the new Bundesliga season, level on points with table-toppers Leverkusen. In the Europa League, they've come out of the gate even stronger, getting a thundering 8-2 aggregate win over French cup holders Guingamp.

This Friday in the Europa League group stage draw, things continued in a positive direction. Hamburg, in the highest-seeded pot, got an easy draw in Group C: Three runners-up from three weak leagues – Scotland's Celtic, Hapoel Tel Aviv of Israel, and Austria's Rapid Vienna.

Werder Bremen were also emphatic winners of their two-legged qualifier, defeating Kazakh side FC Aktobe 8-3. And they were rewarded for their good performance in last year's UEFA Cup, in which they reached the final, with a top seed and a winnable group L.

Bremen's opponents are Austria Vienna, third place in their domestic league; fourth-placed Portuguese side Nacional da Madeira; and Athletic Bilbao, who were runners-up in the Spanish cup, but finished a lowly 13th in the league.

Berlin lucky, too

The Bundesliga's final representative, Hertha BSC Berlin, labored to qualify for the group stage, eking out a 4-3 aggregate win over Brondby ony by virtue of a three-goal surge in the last twenty minutes of their second-leg home match. As a club who have had little European success, they were in the third seeded pot for the draw.

Nonetheless, Hertha came away with a draw into Group D that they believe capable of advancing from. Sporting Lisbon came second in the Portuguese league last year and should present a real challenge, but Dutch cup winners Heerenveen could be seen as no better than on par with the Berliners and Ventspils are the champions of a very weak Latvian league.

The remaining groups are as follows:

Group A: Ajax, Anderlecht, Dinamo Zagreb, FC Timisoara

Group B: Valencia, Lille, Slavia Prague, Genoa

Group E: Roma, Basel, Fulham, CSKA Sofia

Group F: Panathinaikos, Galatasaray, Dinamo Bucharest, Sturm Graz

Group G: Villareal, Lazio, Levski Sofia, Red Bull Salzburg

Group H: Steaua Bucharest, Fenerbahce, Twente, Sheriff Tiraspol

Group I: Benfica, Everton, AEK Athens, BATE Borisov

Group J: Shakhtar Donetzk, Club Brugge, Partizan Belgrade, Toulouse

Group K: PSV Eindhoven, FC Copenhagen, Sparta Prague, CFR Cluj

New format

If that seems like a lot of groups, it is. With the transformation of the UEFA Cup into the Europa League, there are more groups and more matches.

In the UEFA Cup, groups were made up of five teams and each side would play two home and two away matches, with luck deciding who would play whom where. The Europa League group stage participants will play six matches, home and away, with each of their group opponents.

The top two teams in each group, 24 sides in all, advance to the round of 32, which is filled out by the eight clubs who came third in their Champions League groups.

Play begins September 17 and continues through to the final, set for Hamburg on May 12.

Author: Matt Hermann

Editor: Rick Demarest