Getafe's European road looked far clearer on Monday morning than it had just hours earlier. At 8:30, UEFA published on its website the subgroup breakdown for the Conference League play-off draw and placed José Bordalás's side in Group 4, a split that narrows the list of possible opponents to eight clubs, paired into four ties.

The four ties from which Getafe's opponent will emerge are these:

— Sporting Braga – Dinamo Minsk

— Dynamo Kyiv – Qarabag

— Partizan Belgrade – Tobol

— Lugano – NSÍ Runavík

The telling detail is not only who is on the list, but who has dropped off it. Until Monday, Getafe were unseeded in a main path that could have thrown up heavyweights such as Atalanta, Ajax, Monaco, Freiburg, Brighton, Salzburg, Rangers or Copenhagen. None of them is in Group 4. The subgroup allocation, decided by UEFA's administration before the draw, has cleared the entire top tier from the Madrid side's path.

Braga, the toughest name in the group

With the giants out of the picture, the most imposing side in the subgroup is Sporting Braga, one of the benchmark clubs in Portuguese football and an almost permanent fixture in the latter stages of European competition over the past decade. The Portuguese side must first see off Dinamo Minsk, the Belarusian champions and the weaker link in that tie.

A rung below sits the meeting between Dynamo Kyiv and Qarabag, two clubs with plenty of European mileage: the Ukrainians are one of the continent's traditional powers and Champions League regulars, while the Azerbaijanis have become a fixture in group stages in recent years. Whoever goes through would arrive at the play-off with competitive minutes already banked, and would mean a long trip for Getafe.

The two most manageable options on paper come from the other two ties. Partizan Belgrade are a Serbian institution whose European standing has faded, and Tobol, the Kazakh champions, have rarely gone beyond the qualifying rounds. Much the same applies to Switzerland's Lugano and, above all, to NSÍ Runavík: the Faroese club is comfortably the most modest opponent the draw could hand the Madrid side.

No seeding reward

Getafe will go into the draw from the unseeded pot, which means their opponent must come from the seeded group: they cannot be paired with any of the other clubs sharing their pot, such as Twente, Beitar Jerusalem or Maccabi Tel Aviv, all of them also placed in Group 4.

Getafe fell just short of the top pot on UEFA's coefficient ranking, the criterion that orders the draw. It is worth noting, though, that the ranking should not be mistaken for a real measure of difficulty: it is an administrative tool that rewards accumulated European mileage and says little about the current state of any squad. Getafe themselves are a good example.

How the 14:00 draw works

UEFA splits the 38 clubs in the main path into four subgroups — three of ten clubs and one of eight — each containing the same number of seeded and unseeded teams. Getafe were placed in the group of eight, the smallest, which is why their possible opponents come down to four ties.

The draw does not pull out names but numbers: each club is assigned a ball, the lower numbers going to the seeded clubs and the higher ones to the unseeded. When two numbers are paired, the one drawn first determines who plays the first leg at home. Getafe will therefore know at that very moment whether they open the tie at the Coliseum, currently undergoing building work, or travel first: being seeded brings no right to finish at home in this round.

The dates

The final opponent will not be known until the third qualifying round ties are settled, played over two legs on 6 and 13 August. The play-off first leg is scheduled for Tuesday 20 August and the second leg for Tuesday 27 August, with kick-off times to be confirmed by UEFA after the draw. The side scoring more goals over the 180 minutes goes through to the league phase; if the tie is level there will be extra time and, if needed, penalties, with away goals no longer counting double.

The draw could therefore take Getafe to Portugal, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Switzerland or the Faroe Islands, in what would be the fourth European campaign in the club's history. And with more than their own place at stake: the performance of Spanish clubs in Europe decides LaLiga's fifth Champions League berth, the same one earned last season through Rayo Vallecano's run in this competition.