When Uefa announced its plans for a Champions League reform two years ago, the response was divided. Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool coach, criticized that the teams had more games, which unnecessarily increased the burden on the professionals. For a team from the Premier League, which has far more games than German clubs, that’s an understandable reaction. Fan organizations were also disappointed and the star criticized that Uefa “mercilessly milks football” and does not act in the interest of the sport.
So far there has been no major debate. This is also due to the fact that the new mode will only apply from 2024. Uefa has now presented the new form in detail. This is what she looks like.
In future, 36 teams will play in the Champions League preliminary round, four more than before. The four other clubs are determined as follows: In addition, the third-placed team in the top five leagues (according to Uefa coefficients) has a fixed place. Currently that would be a team from the French league, which has only two fixed places so far (champion and runner-up). Two other participants are recruited from the national associations whose clubs have performed best in the previous season. Currently, the English Premier League and Spanish La Liga would be the candidates to provide another Champions League participant. But the Bundesliga can also count on another Champions League place in this category. The fourth participant is the champion of one of the minor leagues. The champions from Austria, the Netherlands, Serbia and Scotland are currently directly qualified. Another minor league champion would join them.
The group stage will be completely abolished. Instead of eight groups of four with 32 teams, the preliminary round is played in a kind of league system with 36 teams. However, not everyone competes against everyone, but the teams are only drawn eight opponents, against whom they play in four home and four away games. This increases the number of games for each team in the preliminary round to eight. So far, each team has only met the three group opponents in home and away games.
For the draw, the clubs are divided into four pots. The first pot consists of the defending champions and the champions of the top eight leagues, while pots two to four – as before – are filled in descending order according to the Uefa coefficient list. Each team is drawn two opponents from each pot (one home and one away game from one pot). It is provided that two teams from the same association do not meet. Since this can be difficult in a league that has four or more teams, there may be an exception.
The dates for the games in the preliminary round extend from September to January. A change is also planned here: Each of the three European cup competitions (Champions League, Europa League, Conference League) will have a week on its own, during which the other two competitions will pause. This means that ten European Cup weeks can be seen in the preliminary round. That’s four more than before.
Qualifying for the round of 16 is also affected by the reform. The first eight teams in the preliminary round table qualify directly. The other eight places will be played out in an extra play-off round – and this is also new. Places ninth to sixteen meet places 17 to 24. The clubs from places ninth to 16 play an away game first. The clubs that ended up in places 25 to 26 are completely out.
Once the round of 16 is complete, it continues as usual in the knockout system with back and forth games. However, one change is also planned here: There is a fixed tournament tree. So the path is set until the final, avoiding draws in the knockout stages. The 24 teams that made it to the knockout rounds or the play-off phase are paired up. First place with second place, third place with fourth place and so on. These pairs are then distributed to the different halves of the tournament, so that the first in the table can only meet the second in the final at the earliest. From the play-offs for the round of 16, clubs from the same league can meet.
Otherwise everything stays the same. With the exception of the final, the knockout round is played in return games, but in a two-week rhythm. So far there have been three weeks in the knockout round.
Quellen: “kicker”, “DAZN”, UEFA.
