As time goes on in the world of football, it becomes necessary to make changes to different tournaments to ensure that all teams are included and not left behind. Starting from the 2024/25 season, the Champions League will undergo significant modifications. This article will explore these changes and their impact on European football.
Starting from the 2024/25 season, the UEFA Champions League will adopt the “Swiss model,” a fresh approach aimed at expanding the participation of teams and, naturally, boosting its financial gains.
The changes have primarily occurred due to financial reasons. Currently, the Champions League generates approximately €3.5 billion annually for UEFA. Increasing the number of games creates more opportunities for commercial ventures, giving wealthier clubs a higher likelihood of qualifying each year. UEFA is projected to see a rise in revenue from the Champions League alone, reaching €4.5bn.
The Champions League will increase the number of teams from 32 to 36 in the new format. The traditional group stage will be replaced by a single league phase where all 36 teams will participate. Each team will play eight matches, split evenly between home and away games, over a ten-week period. This new format will result in a total of 189 matches, compared to the previous 125.
The top eight teams in the league will automatically qualify for the knockout stage, while teams ranked 9th to 24th will compete in a two-legged play-off to secure their spot in the last 16. The bottom eight teams will be eliminated.
Additionally, teams from the same country may face each other in the last 16 or play-off rounds, instead of being restricted to the quarter-finals as before. The round of 16 will also be fully seeded, ensuring that the best teams are kept apart until the final, with first and second-placed teams on opposite sides of the draw.
Four extra spots will be added to the new champions league format. UEFA has stated that two of these spots will be given to nations whose clubs have performed the best collectively in Europe in the previous season.
For example, if these new rules were in place for the current campaign, the additional spots would have gone to clubs from England and the Netherlands.
The third spot will be given to the club ranked third in the league of the fifth-placed nation in the UEFA national association ranking, which is currently France. This is because the third and fourth-ranked nations already have their top four teams qualifying for the group stages.
UEFA prefers that the top two nations send five clubs and the next three nations send four clubs, rather than the top three nations sending five clubs and the fourth nation sending four clubs, with the fifth nation only sending three.
To accommodate this, the final additional spot in the UEFA Champions League group stage will be given to a domestic champion by increasing the number of clubs qualifying through from four to five.
The introduction of this new format will result in an increase in the number of games. Given the players’ response to the lengthy extra time minutes in the English Premier League, it will be fascinating to observe how Europe’s top players adapt to the changes in the Champions League, which will be implemented starting from the 2024/25 season.
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