Got an email from UEFA explaining the new Champions League format today.
The present Champions League group stage includes 32 participants divided into eight groups of four. From the 2024/25 season, 36 clubs will participate in the Champions League league phase (former group stage), giving four more sides the opportunity to compete against the best clubs in Europe. Those 36 clubs will participate in a single league competition in which all 36 competing clubs are ranked together.
Under the new format, teams will play eight matches in the new league phase (former group stage). They will no longer play three opponents twice – home and away – but will instead face fixtures against eight different teams, playing half of those matches at home and half of them away. To determine the eight different opponents, the teams will initially be ranked in four seeding pots. Each team will then be drawn to play two opponents from each of these pots, playing one match against a team from each pot at home, and one away.
That’s a lot of restructuring to fit 4 more teams in. My only real dislike is that this throws out aggregate scoring, which I find creates some fun tensions, but it also ends the need for those aggregate tiebreaks, which IMO is a good outcome.
That’s a huge increase in group/league games, from 96 to 144 (if I calculated correctly). And (more importantly for clubs) increases their fixtures from 6 to 8, and they have to prepare for 8 different opponents rather than 3, which is a huge increase in workload for the coaching staff. Presumably they will also scrap the second group stage, and the top 16 of 36 in this new format will progress to a knockout? If so then maybe it improves rather than worsens fixture congestion.
My other concern is that formats where you play a different set of opponents from your peers are inherently less fair than where you all play the same set. A full league is the fairest format possible (it’s hard to argue with your finishing position at the end of it), it remains to be seen whether 8 games is enough to even out ‘luck of the draw’. Looks like they’ve done their best to do so with how it’s structured.
Yeah, I missed that’s a pretty insane increase in the number of games. As for round two,…
The top eight in the standings go direct to the round of 16 in March. Teams ranked ninth to 24th go into the knockout playoffs in February. The bottom 12 teams are eliminated.
Very true, and very lamented by the clubs and their coaches. See also the planned reform for the Club WC with 24 participants, FIFA wants to keep up there with the CL (in profit, not in quality).
So, it used to be that you had to play 13 matches to win the tournament. Now, depending on whether you can skip the playoff phase or not, it’s either 15 or 17 matches.
If I were running a team that had its own intra-country league, like the Bundesliga Pokal, i’m not sure I would have much regret about playing a B team & failing out of those tournaments. Which isn’t that far from how it maybe already was, but even more so now.
I think this has shown me the most likely source of unfairness - it seems to me (without looking at potential participants) that there will probably be a wide range of ability within ‘pool 4’ (teams ranked 29th to 36th), from ‘my word, we need to take this seriously’ to ‘our third team will still thrash this lot’. Tier 1 teams drawn against 2 of the latter in the initial phase will enjoy a significant advantage against teams drawn against 2 of the former.
The previous group stages were always like that anyway. Same with all the major tournaments. The only way you could really get away from unfair draws is to do something like the winner of the top 8 leagues into a mini league. Then you could either do the winner or top 4 or top 2 into knock out tournament. That’d get you 14, 15, or 16 games.
Top 8 currently would be England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium.
I don’t hate the idea, but I personally prefer the diversity of a large field and would trade fairness for that.
One thing I like about this new system. Each team will get two matches against teams from the same pot. So the top seeded teams will have two games against other top seeded teams where previously they were kept apart. Similarly teams in the lowest ranking pots will get two games against each other.
This means teams in the top pots are no longer guaranteed an easier schedule which might go some way towards making this expanded league stage more competive.
I think there isn’t much difference within each pot plus the extra games mean that even if you draw an opponent who is much better/worse than the other teams in the same pot, it’s only one of 8 fixtures so it doesn’t have a huge effect.
The motivation behind this was because the big clubs almost broke away to form their own league, so this mitigates the chances of a repeat of that near calamity.
I’m looking forward to the new format. Time will tell if it’s any good.
I very much like that teams eliminated from the Champions League and Europa League now just go home instead of potentially dropping into a lower level tournament and beating up on smaller teams there. (which should also be taken into account when comparing the total number of games teams could play under the old and new formats).
I hate the nations leagues. I want more diversity of opponents, not always playing the same handful. Plus there are already continental championships that remain much more prestigious.
Of course the main championships are far more important. But to your other point, I think it’s very good for the tiny nations to have some competitive games instead of always losing.
I’m not sure if you’re saying tiny nations lose more in the nations league or in friendlies? San Marino didn’t really schedule Argentina in friendlies.
It’s probably a bigger issue for US fans than fans of UEFA teams as there are only 2 current ~peers in CONCACAF so the majority of Nations League games are a waste.
But I was delighted to see the result!