Champions League Format Is Changing Big Time Next Year
Starting next season, the Champions League format will be changing for what UEFA promises to be the better of the league. The UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin says that the committee has passed the new format and focused on the qualification being given based on sporting merit. The goal for the format change is for the big matchups to occur earlier in the competition and allow for the stakes to be higher in every match, most specifically the ones earlier in the competition.
Right now, the competition starts with 32 teams competing within eight groups of four for a spot in the round of 16. This will now change, instead of having just 32 teams there will be 36 teams now that will all compete in one league format. In this new league format, each team will play against eight different clubs, four of those matches being away and four of them being at home.
The teams that each club plays will be selected from four seed pots which are based on ranking with two opponents being picked from each pot (one home game and one away per pot). Out of those 36 teams, the top eight qualify straight to the round of 16, while the teams ranked ninth through 24 battle it out in two-legged-play-off matches to decide which team makes it through. This means the teams ranked 25-36 will automatically be eliminated from the tournament.
UEFA says that this change comes as a way to have clubs be tested more against various opponents from a wider range of countries. They also believe that this new format will allow the top teams to match up against other top teams more often than in the current format. Fans, on the other hand, are not as keen or excited about this format as the UEFA committee members.
Fans like the old format and do not think that it needs a change at all, and they also believe that this new format will just make the fan viewing experience worse. Only time will tell if this new format succeeds or fails.
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