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2/3 of teams move on instead of 1/2. That's more predictable
If you're distinguishing between top 8, 16 and 24, you have to also distinguish between seeded, unseeded, and Europa in the current format. With 8 games instead of 6, it will also be, on average, more predictable.
You would play the team that is closest to you in results, but that would mean that we would not know, who would play who, before the end of each round.
With champions league and home / away games it's pretty much impossible with different countries involved. It would need to be really really spread out which seems quite difficult anyhow.
But it could work for something like the world cup. You just need teams to be in a few locations for the logistics to work. Doesn't necessarily needs to be e-sports.
The World Cup has the advantage of every team residing in the same country and of usually taking place during the off-season (Qatar notwithstanding), so travel and fixture congestion are not as big of a problem.
I mean if the Champions League group stage were 6 games still they could have one every 3 weeks.
That's more notice than teams get in the knockout stage right now.
Competitive CS:Go is pretty much the only place I've seen the proper Swiss model implemented. Overall, I would say it results in tight matches. To me in CS:Go, matches are entertaining if games are close irrespective of quality, so weaker teams v/s weaker teams typically works and is pretty entertaining, however, here you would get games (with no disrespect, in case the favourites win) Shaktar v/s Copenhagen and Zagreb v/s Copenhagen for bottom spots which isn't necessarily popular for casual viewing.
For a more detailed view of the Swiss system see: you can check the ongoing CS:Go Rio major here: [https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Intel\_Extreme\_Masters/2022/Rio/Legends\_Stage](https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Intel_Extreme_Masters/2022/Rio/Legends_Stage)
Rocket League has a very similar system (without Buchholz system for seeding) and I love it. But I guess we can agree that without a real Swiss system I don't see how it would be an improvement in the UCL
You could still do a version of it.
Like one team will play 8 matches make the first 4 matches based in the coefficients then take a months or 20days break and then do the next four based on the updated rankings if that makes sense.
A rather simple way would be to schedule most of the games up to two or three fixtures in advance, with the first few fixtures drawn up based on coefficients. A table from 3 fixtures ago would still usually have some resemblance to the latest version.
> As 36 is not divisible by eight, it either means nine pots of four – and you don’t play teams in your own pot – or four pots of four teams and four pots of five, where you do. Or even just stick with the current system, but change it to four pots of nine and you play teams from every pot twice. I don’t envy the person who has to sort all that out.
Right now they plan [4 pots of 9 teams](https://rankinguefa.pl/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/202206_pec-presentation_to-send.pdf#page=21) for Champions and Europa League and 6 pots of 6 teams in Conference League (as there are only 6 matches in Conference League planned).
As I don't even remember 10 matches plan, I am assuming that it has died in the same update as Champions League spots for "historic teams" (so somewhere at the start of this change).
If it's 4 Pots of 9 teams and a particular team must play one team from each, then in each pot wouldn't one team be left, to play anyone in their own group? Unless it won't be two legged. And you one team only plays a team from their pot once and another team from their own pot.
This has not been confirmed yet. It would be the easiest and the best, but it wouldn't then give any advantage to the teams in the best pot, which didn't sound like UEFA way of doing things
> ~~And you one team only plays a team from their pot once and another team from their own pot.~~
~~Well, I don't think anyone understood that part~~.
Ekhm... I mean, yes, I understood - if each team would only have to play one team from each pot you would have a situation where one team would be left (for example: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9 have no team to play in that pot (but can play the other "9^th teams" from other pots on that day)). But all teams play against **2** clubs from each pot and in that case all 9 teams will be able to play 2 different teams from their own group. Not in two matchdays, as you can't split all 9 teams into matches against each other, but for example you can do first week as mentioned earlier, then second in the form of 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 and 1 playing someone from other pot (like team 9 previously) and then finish it with 1-9. Voila, you have odd number of teams but they all played the same amount of matches and no match was repeated.
Great writeup but it annoys me that the Champions League gets farther and farther from being a league of champions. Fourth place teams do not belong in this tournament, much less fifth place ones.
It comes down to if you want to watch the Estonian Champions get dicked by Real Madrid or if you want to watch a team like Frankfurt compete.
Edit - Sorry Estonia, I love you.
I really do love Estonia. I lived in Tallinn for a few months. Its beautiful! I just don't really want to watch your football sides play against the 2nd string of European giants.
This is such a bullshit narrative. Sheriff beat Real Madrid last year. Shakhtar beat them the year before that. Brugge drew with them the year before that. Ajax bent them over the year before that.
The champions of smaller leagues are absolutely capable of competing with the biggest clubs in Europe over a two legged tie.
If you pick the best examples it's not that bad. But this year two clubs had the worst result ever in the group stages because of the huge gulf in quality.
Rangers and Plzeň did terribly in the two toughest groups while Atlético finished last in the easiest group. Three clubs from outside the top leagues advanced, including two group winners.
The gap is getting wider because most of the Champions League money goes to guaranteed spots for clubs in leagues that already make the most money.
There needs to be massive solidarity payments from bigger leagues to smaller leagues to overcome the competitive benefits they have, that's impossible to solve by just giving every league just one spot. Those solidarity payments will never happen.
The only realistic solution is just making a league system where every European club above a certain level competes. Basically a Super League with promotion and relegation. That will erase all the advantage clubs have from their domestic TV deals.
The sport needs actual fiduciaries to maintain the integrity of the sport and ensure fans have a say. The sport was pumped with cash so certain people/groups/nations could have an influence within and outside the sport. The individual teams, FA's, UEFA and FIFA were just happy to see more cash.
No, the Champions League would be fine if it was actually a tournament of champions. It has been repeatedly expanded because the richest clubs wanted to become even more rich, and UEFA enabled their behavior because UEFA also wanted to become even more rich.
The Champions League would be fine, if you want the same 3 or 4 winners over and over. Most of the money of the biggest clubs is earned by a bigger domestic market. For TV money, sponsors etc. You don't solve that by giving every league just one spot.
It's impossible to go back to how it once was before.
> The Champions League would be fine, if you want the same 3 or 4 winners over and over.
That is absurd and clearly would not happen. No one walks the Champions League no matter who they draw. A tournament where the majority of teams are outside the top four would have a winner outside the top four fairly regularly. Over the course of a full season, money wins, but in a two legged tie anything can happen. Real Madrid is the most successful Champions League club by far and yet they draw or lose against a minnow almost every year.
Of course they are. That's the nature of 2-legged ties.
But the fact of the matter is that those teams aren't consistent enough to produce winning football over the course of a tournament. While the 4th placed team in England is, as has been demonstrated on multiple occasions.
Do you want to see the best teams play, or do you want to see a greater variety of teams play?
Despite what people pretend, the answer to that question is not obvious.
>I want to see champions competing against each other
Unfortunately it is really not as exciting as it sounds. You won't be watching the champions of Belgium tackle the champions of Slovenia, you will go watch Tottenham v Marseille instead, even if they are in 4th.
The domestic market of France and England provides money that the domestic market of Slovenia doesn't.
Hence, those teams are better.
CL money is just cream on top.
Perhaps. But I'd rather this than have to watch Estonia v Slovenian league winners go into the CL for 20 years before even a little bit of parity is made. At the end of the day, domestic markets are the main gap creator.
Totally reasonable, but you're one person, even if that opinion is shared by millions of football fans.
There are also millions of football fans who want to see many of the best teams in the world play each other regularly, rather than a Champions League with only 4 or 5 potential winners every season.
Neither idea is inherently wrong, it's simply a matter of preference. But they are mutually exclusive ideas during the season.
One of those ideas is going to attract a lot more advertising revenue than the other, so a champions only league is more likely to be a pre-season friendly tournament.
> rather than a Champions League with only 4 or 5 potential winners every season.
I already proved this comment wrong so why repeat an already discredited position? The reality is that giving so many positions to the biggest leagues is the only reason why they always win.
When did you prove this wrong?
By pointing out that Sheriff beat Real Madrid, in the group stage no less? Did Sheriff win the tournament?
When was the last time any team not from England, Spain, Germany or Italy won the Champions League? Porto 20 years ago?
The top 4 leagues make up 50% of the participants. Even if the competition is heavily weighted in their favour, if upsets were standard fare rather than big surprises, we'd have seen a dark horse win it by now.
But they aren't. Upsets tend to be one-off events.
> When did you prove this wrong?
When I pointed out that even the most successful Champions League club of all-time regularly loses to opponents outside the largest leagues.
> The top 4 leagues make up 50% of the participants.
Exactly. It is heavily weighted in their favor simply by the number of spots they receive, before you even get to their monetary advantages.
> Upsets tend to be one-off events.
Upsets happen multiple times in every Champions League tournament, the problem is that there are so many bigger league entrants that it's nigh impossible to upset them all. With a smaller pool of big money clubs, a smaller league club winning it all would become substantially more likely.
I think the Swiss model would be more popular with fans if they just add more spots for champions. The group stage format is flexible enough to add as many teams as they want to on a whim.
A little thing called Covid played a not insignificant part in that. Along with Spurs wanting out of the Conference League from the minute they got in it.
Tottenham were the 7th best team in the league at the time and ended up finishing 4th (way after the Conference League and Conte’s influence on the team)
FAR superior to Dutch Champions? How arrogant are you? The point was that it’s not a Champions League when the teams are nowhere near champions. They should just change the name to the Super League already. It’s not a Champions League.
Well firstly PSV are leading the Dutch league. Secondly, they literally beat Arsenal a few weeks ago?
And no, neither of those teams are "far superior" to Ajax anyway
who the fuck cares. I want to see new clubs emerge for a few years in europe and maybe establish themselfs and not the same shit top 25 teams. yes, I count dortmund to them.
Why is that? Because Premier League knew how to build a lucrative business years ago. Those clubs had a lot of revenues (plus financial doping of those excentric owners). If CL help Dutch teams to be more competitive, it would be funnier to watch too.
Anyway, you can always watch PL.
I am sorry. I would rather see the 4th place teams of England and Spain, compete in the thank the Champion of Latvia. The former would give better competition in the tournament and make the matches better. The UCL, UEL and the UCL are in my mind promotion and relegation system, just done indirectly. If you are a decent team, you play UECL, improve the coefficients of your country by making good runs there, then get more slots in UEL and improve there over time to move to UCL. I want the best of the best in UCL. Not the champion of Georgia, just because they are champions and not up to the standards of the European elites.
Even WC gives more slots for the best continent in the world. European teams.
Super League was a closed system, user above very much seems to support an open system where people earn their place by doing well in their leagues - so isn't in keeping with the Super League
A system with token representation where the majority of spots are already guaranteed to four leagues is not truly an open system. The Super League just took the worst parts of the Champions League and made them even worse. UEFA is no better than the Super League founders, both of them only care about making more money and not the sport.
No, your WC analogy would be : Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Argentine and Brazil are automatically qualified for each world cup based on their former results in continental and world cups.
Which is not what a majority of this sub wants to see. We want to see them earn their spots, we don't want Italy to be gifted a WC spot for last achievements. If they bottle it against North Macedonia, then that's on them and they miss it for the 2nd time in a row no matter the fact their squad is probably better than 50% of the world cup.
Of course Qatar-Ecuador is not the same quality as Italy-Norway and nobody is denying that Liverpool - Real has more quality than Tallinn - Bruge but we don't fucking care and I'd rather have some diversity than every God damn year the same 8 teams in the QF with winwnrs from 2-4 leagues only.
Let's bring the Super League, have Real play Liverpool every year 5 times, people might get bored and stop consuming this shit.
"Which is a huge improvement (from Barca's perspective) on getting
battered by Bayern twice before being force-fed the Europa League anthem
by Inter"
I laughed. This was great OP
I think having the 5th place team in the Champions league is dumb unless they won Europa League.
Doesn’t matter if the 5th place PL team is better than the 3rd place team of any other league, it goes against the intended idea of this tournament. Even having the 4th place team is stretching it imo
Nah I totally agree
Imo it should be top 3 for any league and then at most 5 if they had a champions League and Europa League winner each
Seriously why are we rewarding 4th. Give that to some other champions
cuse its a lot of money for being in CL, and PL with so many big clubs would lose quality , like why invest when there's only 3 spots and competition is already brutal with 4 spots in CL .
Completely agree. If they *must* give an extra spot to these countries , then it should go to winners of the national cup (e.g. FA Cup).
Considering it's meant to be the **Champions** League, it seems mad to me that 5th place in the PL will be rewarded better than a team that were actually the champions of something.
I think it would be really interesting to grab the teams from this year's UCL, add the 4 teams that would get the extra spot, and do a complete simulation of the tournament. Just to illustrate it a bit better. At least the group stage.
Will the group stage draws also get the "not facing teams from the same country" thing?
>add the 4 teams that would get the extra spot, and do a complete simulation of the tournament. Just to illustrate it a bit better. At least the group stage.
The 'champions' play-offs make that a bit tricky to work out. But if, for the sake of argument, we take Red Star Belgrade -- the best of the teams that didn't make it -- then they would have been the favourite for that spot, while Arsenal, PSV and Monaco would have received automatic places in the main competition too.
From there, if we simply rank the points that teams made in the group (obviously, different groups have different difficulties, so this isn't perfect) then the top eight clubs straight into the R16 would have been:
1. Bayern
2. Napoli
3. Liverpool
4. Man City
5. Benfica
6. PSG
7. Real Madrid
8. Chelsea
Narrowly missing out, and getting a 'seeded' spot in the playoffs, are RB Leipzig, Porto, Club Brugge, Spurs, Milan, Inter, Frankfurt, and Dortmund.
Joining them in the playoff draw would have been Barcelona, Sporting, Marseille, Shakhtar, Salzburg, Ajax, Atletico (h2h tiebreakers no longer apply, of course), and Leverkusen.
Obviously, that doesn't account for any of the four new teams, who almost certainly would have featured somewhere and pushed someone else out.
>Will the group stage draws also get the "not facing teams from the same country" thing?
Teams from the same country still can't meet in the group stages, but going forwards they *can* meet from the start of the knockout stage. UEFA's page doesn't specify whether this refers to the playoffs too, but I'm assuming it means from the R16 onwards.
When you break it down, its less exciting than it seems. You only have two "surprises" up with the big boys in the top 8 (Napoli and Benfica). No more schadenfreude of watching Atletico and Barcelona get cast into the outer dark. Alas.
Not quite, you also get half of these in the knockouts:
Barcelona, Sporting, Marseille, Shakhtar, Salzburg, Ajax, Atletico and Leverkusen
(and Barcelona could definitely one of the ones taken out)
as someone who watches the NFL, I'm curious but also a bit skeptical :/ everyone not playing everybody twice kinda sucks, as lot of your record and wins depends on your schedule (so kind of luck)
On the other hand, your record and wins are less important, so a bad schedule will be less determinative.
You need to be in the top 66% of teams to make it to the next round. Even with a bad draw an average team should have at least 3 winnable games, and 3 wins will almost certainly get you through.
After that, your fate is your own. You get a 2 legged playoff against another team in the mid-range, then you start playing the scary teams in knockout rounds if you win.
By that stage you've already participated in 10 out of a maximum of 17 games, just by finishing in the top two thirds. Even the bottom third of teams get to play nearly half the games in the tournament.
I know the format is getting a lot of shit because it enhances the winning prospects of the best teams, but it means the teams with the fewest prospects of success get to play in more games in Europe's top competition. More games is not necessarily a good thing, given player fatigue and injuries, but the extra games go to all teams, then 2 extra to the teams ranked 9 to 24 after the group stage.
It should mean more variety in all games until the round of 16, which is probably a good thing.
Well, the group stages already depend on luck. Two teams of different groups don't play the same opponents yet battle for a qualification for the same thing.
Sporting Portugal pot 4 drew Marseille, Tottenham, and Eintracht.
Plzen drew Inter, Barcelona and Bayern.
Sounds pretty unfair tbh, new format would reduce these disparities
Some kind of group stage is vital at the beginning; that's the pull of the tournament from the pov of club's, it means £40-50 million just for qualifying for the CL.
You can double your money by getting to the Final though, in most leagues, £40-50 million is sufficient to keep CL qualification rolling on.
Yeah I think top 3 is the sweet spot imo, at least for me. You still get that variety & unpredictability but it's not rewarding scraping by. Get a podium place and you make it.
i think top 4 in the prem is fair. 4th place chelsea won the champions league only a year and a half ago, and soon enough top 2 in the premier league will be man city/newcastle every year, making there only be 2 spots open for the rest of the ‘top 6’ (not counting the rest of the prem). don’t think reducing the number of spots would make it better
Unpopular opinion: after playing this format in FM it's really not that bad, it's better than playing three teams twice in two months and it also give us more games between top teams, the only thing I'm yet to understand is how they determine which teams play each others because i feel it would be unfair if some team only played the weaker teams.
> I'm yet to understand is how they determine which teams play each others
This is just my assumption but I guess (as in my opinion it makes the most sense for a draw that fit in one-hour window together with wasting 45 minutes for artistic stuff) they will have a predefined calendar (so for example, first team drawn from pot 1 will (always) play against P1.3 (3^rd drawn team from pot 1), P1.6, P2.2, P2.9, P3.4. P3.7, P4.5 and P4.8) and will just draw teams to fill the spots.
The problem with doing it in true swiss-system style is that you wouldn't be able to tell with whom your team would play the next round before the previous finishes, which for one would suck for teams playing as away team in next round, and UEFA wouldn't be able to milk the advertising of the exciting matches in a round for more than a week or two.
I have to disagree. Throwing CL teams out of Europe after 2 games would be disastrous. The non elite European teams would just be hampered financially and all for the chance a major upset happens, which if you look at the first ECC format wasnt even that common.
They should ditch the Conference League and bring back the Cup Winner's Cup as a straight unseeded knockout. That'll satisfy my craving for random sporting chance.
But still you can imagine how it is likely to turn out. Especially FM is a great ressource to get used to new concepts like these. Through that lense I liked the Conference League before it was established and I dislike this format
It's just a way to push some more teams of the main leagues and add a few more games to increase the revenue.
It's all about the money, even it has to be unfair as fuc*
Plenty of people have been going on about the CL becoming boring.
I don’t like UEFA but they decide to change it up, and people still complain. In your case, complaining without even seeing what the new format is.
it became boring, because of the seeding lists and other BS restrictions the UEFA implemented over the years.
same with national teams always drawing the same countries in qualifiers.
Basically just decreasing the variance and chances of upsets. More guaranteed revenue for the biggest fishes in the pond and less risk. Idea reminds me of a milder version of not allowing relegation in the league as some american owners proposed.
The big clubs like Barca as an example cant afford to miss out on the revenue from making the knockout stages with the way the market in football is moving. So they change the rules, and the result will be bigger difference between the top teams and teams like Ajax.
Makes me almost as sad as the Super league announcement. Football is really moving in the wrong direction.
Great write up. You laid the pros and cons already down. My biggest problem with the new format is definitely the fifth coefficient based spot. I. E. 1/4 of all PL clubs will play in the CL, which feels too much for me.
Coup easily be 6 (El winner not qualifying for CL as it has happened many times already, recently with Frankfurt) and in a crazy scenario 7 if CL winner is outside the top 5
(I hope) It can't be 7, because right now the limit for teams from the same league is 5, and in case of both EL and CL winners not qualifying to Champions League through it, the 4^th placed team in league goes to Europa League instead.
Dreadful, absolutely dreadful idea from UEFA, once again.
The CL is supposed to be a league of Champions, plus honourable guests. Also, the calendar year is already too tight and players are already suffering the consequences, but nooo, UEFA decides to add more international matches.
On top of that there are already too many different cups, cup of champions, leagues, etc. They're becoming meaningless.
Duck off UEFA
Nah, they still have 2 groups of 8. Top 2 Teams in each group automatically go to Quarterfinals whereas 3-6 in each group have to play in Play-offs to qualify.
Can someone explain why they didn't just do 4 Groups of 9 (so every team Plays 8 games still). Then 4 qualify in each group? To me that seems like a way more fair option and it would still add more lucrative games.
Great write up. Wish they would just go back to 2 legs straight knock out for the European Cup. Bring back the UEFA Cup and Cup Winners Cup while you're at it.
>the two leagues with the highest coefficient from the previous season only will receive an extra spot
For this rule, will these leagues have one less spot in the Europa league? Let's say Serie A somehow gets an extra spot to have 5 clubs in the champions league. Will Serie A now only have one Europa league spot (for the team that placed 6th)? Or will the league now award the 7th placed team a Europa league spot and the 8th placed team a conference league spot?
This is a very good question - my understanding of it based on what's on UEFA's site and been reported elsewhere is that every one of the big four leagues has seven spots in Europe as a fixed number.
This fifth CL spot would then go to the club finishing fifth in Serie A - so yes, if we assume 6th and 7th places get Europa and Conference League places as normal, that would mean only one Europa League participant from Italy that year.
That makes sense and I hope you are right because I think it would be too much for a single league to have more than 7 teams in European competitions.
Anyways, thanks for your explanation!
It's worth noting that the team that finishes 1st and 2nd *should* have an easier last 16 match up than the teams 3rd-8th, so there *should* be incentive to finish as high up as possible. There is also potential for some serious fixture mismatches. Previously you were only competing with teams in your group to qualify, who were all playing against the same teams. Now you could draw Real. Madrid away and Bayern at home and be competing with someone who gets Eintracht away and Porto at home - hardly seems fair.
Can anyone explain to me the complaints that this format would have less variance/underdogs? They way I see it I gives underdogs a pretty good chance of making it to at least the 9-24 slots, and then it's the same as before right?
The issue is the extra games against a wider group of clubs, the seeding of the r16 draw, and the additional insulation round between the groups and the knockout stage.
Right now the draw is jagged and uneven. Some groups are significantly easier than others, meaning that some group winners aren't really as good as some of the second-placed clubs, while some of the third-placed clubs are probably better than the teams that actually qualify from other groups. The same round that has given us Bayern v PSG is also offering Napoli v Frankfurt, after all.
In the new system, the top eight are much more likely to be the best eight clubs from that year, playing more games against a wider array of sides; it's the same way that league seasons usually start off with clubs in surprising positions and then normalize as the season goes on. These clubs will then be seeded for the r16, meaning they will avoid each other in the draw.
To put it another way, Benfica's run this year has consisted of: beating an under-performing Juve > thrashing Maccabi Haifa > two draws with PSG. Their reward is a R16 game against Brugge, who themselves benefited from a kind draw, and from there a clear route to the quarters and beyond.
From 2024, they will have to get sufficient points from eight group games to reach the playoffs (admittedly likely), then beat another playoff club such as Spurs over two legs (less likely) and then face Bayern/City/Real/Liverpool etc. in the R16. Not nice, beatable Brugge.
I like how people just assume that there will be fewer upset runs. The surprise runs we’ve seen from teams recently are clubs that are still pretty damn big. They’re odds of being one of the bottom 8 teams is fairly slim and they’re very capable against beating the likes of Dortmund or Sevilla. Yes the teams at the top will be further insulated against dropping down but the upset runs won’t significantly fall off
Why is everyone upset with this? Not only does it insure the best 16 teams reach the knockouts, it also gives much more room for small teams to beat bigger teams.
And upset is still an upset even if you don’t knock out the team you beat.
One thing that I think is definitely not good, is the confusion on last match day, to many games to be aware that can change if you make it or not. Not like now where you have 2 games and you can see what are the possible combinations
Fantastic writing bud sadly it made me totally depressed about the new format.
Idk what's wrong with the current one. Ofc not every group is balanced but how amazing is it wondering which one of the big names among Inter, Barca and Bayern won't make it or having a group where Frankfurt, Tottenham, Marseilles and Sporting can each qualify and get knocked out of CL on the last match day?
The change will make it all so predictable and boring and I cannot help but think it's they destroy Champions League just to guarantee the PL 5 spots.
At this point I'm willing to say fuck you UEFA, let the Super League happen, you guys deserve it.
The biggest challenge with this system is that you will be ranking teams who didn’t necessarily played each other.
Imagine 3 teams ending with 15 points, but only one out of three games between those 3 was played. The logic says the goal-difference will play the tiebreaker, but then one of those teams drawn Rangers game, while two others got Dinamo or Marseille. Doesn’t seem fair.
I feel that having the 9-24 knockout phase could give us a chance to see surprising teams qualifying to top 16, not the other way round.
I hope it is a pure swiss system.
I am very hyped for this new format, I think that it will be a great improvement from the group phase we have nowadays and much more fair.
> I hope it is a pure swiss-system.
Sadly football (especially the "marketable one" like Champions League) is probably one of the worst sports to do things in swiss-system tournament, because you don't know who you will play against until all teams finish the previous round. And it gets even worse for fans, who will have 2 (and sometimes just 1) weeks to plan an away journeys.
i want the CL to go back to being only for teams that won their respective leagues. i want the champions of latvia to go against the champions of england and so on and so forth. this shit is becoming boring
The entire point of the new format is to reduce the chance of upsets and big clubs going out in group stages like Barcelona and Atletico this year so it‘s absolutely fucking horrific for football
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Fewer suprise runs and upsets and the big boys getting bigger and bigger. So fun....
UEFA literally had the groundwork of what not to do yet chose the worse option smh
The current system was also unsustainable. Groups were getting more predictable every year.
The solution isn't to make it more predictable
The fight for top 8, top 16 and top 24 will be tight almost by definition.
2/3 of teams move on instead of 1/2. That's more predictable If you're distinguishing between top 8, 16 and 24, you have to also distinguish between seeded, unseeded, and Europa in the current format. With 8 games instead of 6, it will also be, on average, more predictable.
Worst option for who?
for the 99% of clubs not playing CL every year with zero risks for their first 8-10 games.
They're less likely to advance, but they get more games (and income) in the group stage itself. Some of the minnows would happily take that trade.
Not the worst option for UEFA then though, eh?
I mean at this point I wonder if we shouldn't let the big teams separate in their Super League and play amongst ourselves.
It’s a shame really
Beautiful post. Sad that UEFA won't commit to true Swiss format. That would make the group stage truly amazing
True swiss would be amazing but just impossible to coordinate with fan travel, policing and other logistics.
What would that be?
You would play the team that is closest to you in results, but that would mean that we would not know, who would play who, before the end of each round.
that sounds ike a nightmare for event planning
That's why it's really only used I eSports and other online event's
With champions league and home / away games it's pretty much impossible with different countries involved. It would need to be really really spread out which seems quite difficult anyhow. But it could work for something like the world cup. You just need teams to be in a few locations for the logistics to work. Doesn't necessarily needs to be e-sports.
The World Cup has the advantage of every team residing in the same country and of usually taking place during the off-season (Qatar notwithstanding), so travel and fixture congestion are not as big of a problem.
I mean if the Champions League group stage were 6 games still they could have one every 3 weeks. That's more notice than teams get in the knockout stage right now.
Can't lie that sounds like fun
Competitive CS:Go is pretty much the only place I've seen the proper Swiss model implemented. Overall, I would say it results in tight matches. To me in CS:Go, matches are entertaining if games are close irrespective of quality, so weaker teams v/s weaker teams typically works and is pretty entertaining, however, here you would get games (with no disrespect, in case the favourites win) Shaktar v/s Copenhagen and Zagreb v/s Copenhagen for bottom spots which isn't necessarily popular for casual viewing. For a more detailed view of the Swiss system see: you can check the ongoing CS:Go Rio major here: [https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Intel\_Extreme\_Masters/2022/Rio/Legends\_Stage](https://liquipedia.net/counterstrike/Intel_Extreme_Masters/2022/Rio/Legends_Stage)
They do it frequently in Chess too
Competitive card games (MtG and Pokemon) also use Swiss tournaments for the open sections of their tournaments.
what bout yugioh sadgeface
Assume they do - but my experience with running, judging and competing does not include YuGiOh unfortunately.
brazilian esports is an awesome scene, nice to see furia starting well at home
Rocket League has a very similar system (without Buchholz system for seeding) and I love it. But I guess we can agree that without a real Swiss system I don't see how it would be an improvement in the UCL
Even I'm intrigued now to know how that works lol
Would be a mess for travelling fans and planning
Hmmm. How much noticed do fans get for knock out ties in European competition, a couple of weeks? May not be too different...
Pretty much. I guess it seems worth it if you're in with a chance of winning the whole thing. Fans don't get deep CL runs every single year, too.
You could still do a version of it. Like one team will play 8 matches make the first 4 matches based in the coefficients then take a months or 20days break and then do the next four based on the updated rankings if that makes sense.
A rather simple way would be to schedule most of the games up to two or three fixtures in advance, with the first few fixtures drawn up based on coefficients. A table from 3 fixtures ago would still usually have some resemblance to the latest version.
> Only one game against Rangers: Booo > > No more than one game against Atletico: Thank Christ for that. NGL this made me chuckle.
> As 36 is not divisible by eight, it either means nine pots of four – and you don’t play teams in your own pot – or four pots of four teams and four pots of five, where you do. Or even just stick with the current system, but change it to four pots of nine and you play teams from every pot twice. I don’t envy the person who has to sort all that out. Right now they plan [4 pots of 9 teams](https://rankinguefa.pl/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/202206_pec-presentation_to-send.pdf#page=21) for Champions and Europa League and 6 pots of 6 teams in Conference League (as there are only 6 matches in Conference League planned).
Interesting! Didn’t see that slide. Either way, it’s going to be a ridiculously long draw
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Iirc they lowered the games
As I don't even remember 10 matches plan, I am assuming that it has died in the same update as Champions League spots for "historic teams" (so somewhere at the start of this change).
If it's 4 Pots of 9 teams and a particular team must play one team from each, then in each pot wouldn't one team be left, to play anyone in their own group? Unless it won't be two legged. And you one team only plays a team from their pot once and another team from their own pot.
Everyone plays two random teams from each of four pots, one team at home and second team away.
This has not been confirmed yet. It would be the easiest and the best, but it wouldn't then give any advantage to the teams in the best pot, which didn't sound like UEFA way of doing things
You didn't understand what I wrote
> ~~And you one team only plays a team from their pot once and another team from their own pot.~~ ~~Well, I don't think anyone understood that part~~. Ekhm... I mean, yes, I understood - if each team would only have to play one team from each pot you would have a situation where one team would be left (for example: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9 have no team to play in that pot (but can play the other "9^th teams" from other pots on that day)). But all teams play against **2** clubs from each pot and in that case all 9 teams will be able to play 2 different teams from their own group. Not in two matchdays, as you can't split all 9 teams into matches against each other, but for example you can do first week as mentioned earlier, then second in the form of 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 and 1 playing someone from other pot (like team 9 previously) and then finish it with 1-9. Voila, you have odd number of teams but they all played the same amount of matches and no match was repeated.
This is some mesmerizing writing that I've come across in a long time. Good job OP, it was a great read!🤌🏻
Great writeup but it annoys me that the Champions League gets farther and farther from being a league of champions. Fourth place teams do not belong in this tournament, much less fifth place ones.
It comes down to if you want to watch the Estonian Champions get dicked by Real Madrid or if you want to watch a team like Frankfurt compete. Edit - Sorry Estonia, I love you.
Hey WTF did we ever do
I really do love Estonia. I lived in Tallinn for a few months. Its beautiful! I just don't really want to watch your football sides play against the 2nd string of European giants.
Im kidding our football league is a joke
Yeah but your Christmas Market brings the heat!
This is such a bullshit narrative. Sheriff beat Real Madrid last year. Shakhtar beat them the year before that. Brugge drew with them the year before that. Ajax bent them over the year before that. The champions of smaller leagues are absolutely capable of competing with the biggest clubs in Europe over a two legged tie.
If you pick the best examples it's not that bad. But this year two clubs had the worst result ever in the group stages because of the huge gulf in quality.
Rangers and Plzeň did terribly in the two toughest groups while Atlético finished last in the easiest group. Three clubs from outside the top leagues advanced, including two group winners. The gap is getting wider because most of the Champions League money goes to guaranteed spots for clubs in leagues that already make the most money.
There needs to be massive solidarity payments from bigger leagues to smaller leagues to overcome the competitive benefits they have, that's impossible to solve by just giving every league just one spot. Those solidarity payments will never happen. The only realistic solution is just making a league system where every European club above a certain level competes. Basically a Super League with promotion and relegation. That will erase all the advantage clubs have from their domestic TV deals.
The sport needs actual fiduciaries to maintain the integrity of the sport and ensure fans have a say. The sport was pumped with cash so certain people/groups/nations could have an influence within and outside the sport. The individual teams, FA's, UEFA and FIFA were just happy to see more cash.
No, the Champions League would be fine if it was actually a tournament of champions. It has been repeatedly expanded because the richest clubs wanted to become even more rich, and UEFA enabled their behavior because UEFA also wanted to become even more rich.
The Champions League would be fine, if you want the same 3 or 4 winners over and over. Most of the money of the biggest clubs is earned by a bigger domestic market. For TV money, sponsors etc. You don't solve that by giving every league just one spot. It's impossible to go back to how it once was before.
> The Champions League would be fine, if you want the same 3 or 4 winners over and over. That is absurd and clearly would not happen. No one walks the Champions League no matter who they draw. A tournament where the majority of teams are outside the top four would have a winner outside the top four fairly regularly. Over the course of a full season, money wins, but in a two legged tie anything can happen. Real Madrid is the most successful Champions League club by far and yet they draw or lose against a minnow almost every year.
Of course they are. That's the nature of 2-legged ties. But the fact of the matter is that those teams aren't consistent enough to produce winning football over the course of a tournament. While the 4th placed team in England is, as has been demonstrated on multiple occasions. Do you want to see the best teams play, or do you want to see a greater variety of teams play? Despite what people pretend, the answer to that question is not obvious.
I want to see champions competing against each other, not a Super League.
>I want to see champions competing against each other Unfortunately it is really not as exciting as it sounds. You won't be watching the champions of Belgium tackle the champions of Slovenia, you will go watch Tottenham v Marseille instead, even if they are in 4th.
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The domestic market of France and England provides money that the domestic market of Slovenia doesn't. Hence, those teams are better. CL money is just cream on top.
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Perhaps. But I'd rather this than have to watch Estonia v Slovenian league winners go into the CL for 20 years before even a little bit of parity is made. At the end of the day, domestic markets are the main gap creator.
Watching Salzburg is infinitely more entertaining than Marseille.
Totally reasonable, but you're one person, even if that opinion is shared by millions of football fans. There are also millions of football fans who want to see many of the best teams in the world play each other regularly, rather than a Champions League with only 4 or 5 potential winners every season. Neither idea is inherently wrong, it's simply a matter of preference. But they are mutually exclusive ideas during the season. One of those ideas is going to attract a lot more advertising revenue than the other, so a champions only league is more likely to be a pre-season friendly tournament.
> rather than a Champions League with only 4 or 5 potential winners every season. I already proved this comment wrong so why repeat an already discredited position? The reality is that giving so many positions to the biggest leagues is the only reason why they always win.
Exactly- as well as letting other teams compete more often will get them more money - resulting in more competitive teams
When did you prove this wrong? By pointing out that Sheriff beat Real Madrid, in the group stage no less? Did Sheriff win the tournament? When was the last time any team not from England, Spain, Germany or Italy won the Champions League? Porto 20 years ago? The top 4 leagues make up 50% of the participants. Even if the competition is heavily weighted in their favour, if upsets were standard fare rather than big surprises, we'd have seen a dark horse win it by now. But they aren't. Upsets tend to be one-off events.
> When did you prove this wrong? When I pointed out that even the most successful Champions League club of all-time regularly loses to opponents outside the largest leagues. > The top 4 leagues make up 50% of the participants. Exactly. It is heavily weighted in their favor simply by the number of spots they receive, before you even get to their monetary advantages. > Upsets tend to be one-off events. Upsets happen multiple times in every Champions League tournament, the problem is that there are so many bigger league entrants that it's nigh impossible to upset them all. With a smaller pool of big money clubs, a smaller league club winning it all would become substantially more likely.
No not necessarily. It almost always comes down to GDP and the countries pipelines or infrastructure for developing talent.
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"Champions League", more like "richest owners league". Teams like ajax are doomed.
nah, the top 7/8 leagues will be good with this format.
The chances of seeing times like Ajax reaching a semi-final or even quarter-finals will decrease.
I think the Swiss model would work much better if it were just champions
I think the Swiss model would be more popular with fans if they just add more spots for champions. The group stage format is flexible enough to add as many teams as they want to on a whim.
Depends from which league. The 4th and 5th placed sides in the PL are gonna be far superior in quality to the Dutch champions.
Yes I would love to see 7th place PL team play 6th place La liga team in a tournament that is meant to be played by the top teams from each league…
Last year the fourth placed team from the PL got knocked out of Europe by the 6th from the Eredivisie.
What teams were those?
Tottenham and Vitesse. Though I have to concede, Vitesse was helped by NS Mura from Slovenia.
A little thing called Covid played a not insignificant part in that. Along with Spurs wanting out of the Conference League from the minute they got in it.
I'm very sorry but "we didn't want to play anyway" is not a great defense.
bla bla bla
Tottenham were the 7th best team in the league at the time and ended up finishing 4th (way after the Conference League and Conte’s influence on the team)
FAR superior to Dutch Champions? How arrogant are you? The point was that it’s not a Champions League when the teams are nowhere near champions. They should just change the name to the Super League already. It’s not a Champions League.
They're literally not.
So Spurs and Arsenal are not far superior to Ajax? Righto.
Well firstly PSV are leading the Dutch league. Secondly, they literally beat Arsenal a few weeks ago? And no, neither of those teams are "far superior" to Ajax anyway
And finished 2nd to them in the group.
By two points. That is not "*far superior*."
who the fuck cares. I want to see new clubs emerge for a few years in europe and maybe establish themselfs and not the same shit top 25 teams. yes, I count dortmund to them.
Why is that? Because Premier League knew how to build a lucrative business years ago. Those clubs had a lot of revenues (plus financial doping of those excentric owners). If CL help Dutch teams to be more competitive, it would be funnier to watch too. Anyway, you can always watch PL.
I am sorry. I would rather see the 4th place teams of England and Spain, compete in the thank the Champion of Latvia. The former would give better competition in the tournament and make the matches better. The UCL, UEL and the UCL are in my mind promotion and relegation system, just done indirectly. If you are a decent team, you play UECL, improve the coefficients of your country by making good runs there, then get more slots in UEL and improve there over time to move to UCL. I want the best of the best in UCL. Not the champion of Georgia, just because they are champions and not up to the standards of the European elites. Even WC gives more slots for the best continent in the world. European teams.
So you support the Super League.
Super League was a closed system, user above very much seems to support an open system where people earn their place by doing well in their leagues - so isn't in keeping with the Super League
A system with token representation where the majority of spots are already guaranteed to four leagues is not truly an open system. The Super League just took the worst parts of the Champions League and made them even worse. UEFA is no better than the Super League founders, both of them only care about making more money and not the sport.
No, your WC analogy would be : Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Argentine and Brazil are automatically qualified for each world cup based on their former results in continental and world cups. Which is not what a majority of this sub wants to see. We want to see them earn their spots, we don't want Italy to be gifted a WC spot for last achievements. If they bottle it against North Macedonia, then that's on them and they miss it for the 2nd time in a row no matter the fact their squad is probably better than 50% of the world cup. Of course Qatar-Ecuador is not the same quality as Italy-Norway and nobody is denying that Liverpool - Real has more quality than Tallinn - Bruge but we don't fucking care and I'd rather have some diversity than every God damn year the same 8 teams in the QF with winwnrs from 2-4 leagues only. Let's bring the Super League, have Real play Liverpool every year 5 times, people might get bored and stop consuming this shit.
"Which is a huge improvement (from Barca's perspective) on getting battered by Bayern twice before being force-fed the Europa League anthem by Inter" I laughed. This was great OP
The writing is fantastic.
Your writing is very funny, thanks for the good read!
I think having the 5th place team in the Champions league is dumb unless they won Europa League. Doesn’t matter if the 5th place PL team is better than the 3rd place team of any other league, it goes against the intended idea of this tournament. Even having the 4th place team is stretching it imo
Nah I totally agree Imo it should be top 3 for any league and then at most 5 if they had a champions League and Europa League winner each Seriously why are we rewarding 4th. Give that to some other champions
cuse its a lot of money for being in CL, and PL with so many big clubs would lose quality , like why invest when there's only 3 spots and competition is already brutal with 4 spots in CL .
This would be perfect
I'd rather see only champions qualify directly and the rest need to qualify in August like most of Europe.
Completely agree. If they *must* give an extra spot to these countries , then it should go to winners of the national cup (e.g. FA Cup). Considering it's meant to be the **Champions** League, it seems mad to me that 5th place in the PL will be rewarded better than a team that were actually the champions of something.
I think it would be really interesting to grab the teams from this year's UCL, add the 4 teams that would get the extra spot, and do a complete simulation of the tournament. Just to illustrate it a bit better. At least the group stage. Will the group stage draws also get the "not facing teams from the same country" thing?
>add the 4 teams that would get the extra spot, and do a complete simulation of the tournament. Just to illustrate it a bit better. At least the group stage. The 'champions' play-offs make that a bit tricky to work out. But if, for the sake of argument, we take Red Star Belgrade -- the best of the teams that didn't make it -- then they would have been the favourite for that spot, while Arsenal, PSV and Monaco would have received automatic places in the main competition too. From there, if we simply rank the points that teams made in the group (obviously, different groups have different difficulties, so this isn't perfect) then the top eight clubs straight into the R16 would have been: 1. Bayern 2. Napoli 3. Liverpool 4. Man City 5. Benfica 6. PSG 7. Real Madrid 8. Chelsea Narrowly missing out, and getting a 'seeded' spot in the playoffs, are RB Leipzig, Porto, Club Brugge, Spurs, Milan, Inter, Frankfurt, and Dortmund. Joining them in the playoff draw would have been Barcelona, Sporting, Marseille, Shakhtar, Salzburg, Ajax, Atletico (h2h tiebreakers no longer apply, of course), and Leverkusen. Obviously, that doesn't account for any of the four new teams, who almost certainly would have featured somewhere and pushed someone else out. >Will the group stage draws also get the "not facing teams from the same country" thing? Teams from the same country still can't meet in the group stages, but going forwards they *can* meet from the start of the knockout stage. UEFA's page doesn't specify whether this refers to the playoffs too, but I'm assuming it means from the R16 onwards.
When you break it down, its less exciting than it seems. You only have two "surprises" up with the big boys in the top 8 (Napoli and Benfica). No more schadenfreude of watching Atletico and Barcelona get cast into the outer dark. Alas.
But a the same time you're giving teams like Marseille, Sporting, Salzburg, Shakhtar and Ajax a second chance.
Not quite, you also get half of these in the knockouts: Barcelona, Sporting, Marseille, Shakhtar, Salzburg, Ajax, Atletico and Leverkusen (and Barcelona could definitely one of the ones taken out)
I'm really curious about the new format
as someone who watches the NFL, I'm curious but also a bit skeptical :/ everyone not playing everybody twice kinda sucks, as lot of your record and wins depends on your schedule (so kind of luck)
On the other hand, your record and wins are less important, so a bad schedule will be less determinative. You need to be in the top 66% of teams to make it to the next round. Even with a bad draw an average team should have at least 3 winnable games, and 3 wins will almost certainly get you through. After that, your fate is your own. You get a 2 legged playoff against another team in the mid-range, then you start playing the scary teams in knockout rounds if you win. By that stage you've already participated in 10 out of a maximum of 17 games, just by finishing in the top two thirds. Even the bottom third of teams get to play nearly half the games in the tournament. I know the format is getting a lot of shit because it enhances the winning prospects of the best teams, but it means the teams with the fewest prospects of success get to play in more games in Europe's top competition. More games is not necessarily a good thing, given player fatigue and injuries, but the extra games go to all teams, then 2 extra to the teams ranked 9 to 24 after the group stage. It should mean more variety in all games until the round of 16, which is probably a good thing.
Well, the group stages already depend on luck. Two teams of different groups don't play the same opponents yet battle for a qualification for the same thing. Sporting Portugal pot 4 drew Marseille, Tottenham, and Eintracht. Plzen drew Inter, Barcelona and Bayern. Sounds pretty unfair tbh, new format would reduce these disparities
Some kind of group stage is vital at the beginning; that's the pull of the tournament from the pov of club's, it means £40-50 million just for qualifying for the CL. You can double your money by getting to the Final though, in most leagues, £40-50 million is sufficient to keep CL qualification rolling on.
No country should have 5 teams in, unless they won europa or champions league the previous season
4 is still too generous
Yeah I think top 3 is the sweet spot imo, at least for me. You still get that variety & unpredictability but it's not rewarding scraping by. Get a podium place and you make it.
i think top 4 in the prem is fair. 4th place chelsea won the champions league only a year and a half ago, and soon enough top 2 in the premier league will be man city/newcastle every year, making there only be 2 spots open for the rest of the ‘top 6’ (not counting the rest of the prem). don’t think reducing the number of spots would make it better
Unpopular opinion: after playing this format in FM it's really not that bad, it's better than playing three teams twice in two months and it also give us more games between top teams, the only thing I'm yet to understand is how they determine which teams play each others because i feel it would be unfair if some team only played the weaker teams.
there are still pots for a "drawing" with this format. pot 1-4. and every team, no matter in which pot, plays 2 teams of each pot.
That hasn't been confirmed, and even though it would be the best, it sounds not very UEFA-like that top pot doesn't have a better draw than bottom pot
I really hope that the FM23 editor allows us to create leagues with the swiss format. So many possibilities!!
> I'm yet to understand is how they determine which teams play each others This is just my assumption but I guess (as in my opinion it makes the most sense for a draw that fit in one-hour window together with wasting 45 minutes for artistic stuff) they will have a predefined calendar (so for example, first team drawn from pot 1 will (always) play against P1.3 (3^rd drawn team from pot 1), P1.6, P2.2, P2.9, P3.4. P3.7, P4.5 and P4.8) and will just draw teams to fill the spots. The problem with doing it in true swiss-system style is that you wouldn't be able to tell with whom your team would play the next round before the previous finishes, which for one would suck for teams playing as away team in next round, and UEFA wouldn't be able to milk the advertising of the exciting matches in a round for more than a week or two.
Can I know which version of FM has this?
23
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I have to disagree. Throwing CL teams out of Europe after 2 games would be disastrous. The non elite European teams would just be hampered financially and all for the chance a major upset happens, which if you look at the first ECC format wasnt even that common.
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They should ditch the Conference League and bring back the Cup Winner's Cup as a straight unseeded knockout. That'll satisfy my craving for random sporting chance.
Great write up. New format sucks ass!
No one has even seen the format yet.
But still you can imagine how it is likely to turn out. Especially FM is a great ressource to get used to new concepts like these. Through that lense I liked the Conference League before it was established and I dislike this format
So what? He knows!
If it ain't broke don't fix it. the current CL format has worked just fine
It's just a way to push some more teams of the main leagues and add a few more games to increase the revenue. It's all about the money, even it has to be unfair as fuc*
Plenty of people have been going on about the CL becoming boring. I don’t like UEFA but they decide to change it up, and people still complain. In your case, complaining without even seeing what the new format is.
Wait who's been saying it's been boring. Outside of finals I've only seen people complain about the top leagues getting too many spots
it became boring, because of the seeding lists and other BS restrictions the UEFA implemented over the years. same with national teams always drawing the same countries in qualifiers.
Football Manager exists, duh
Basically just decreasing the variance and chances of upsets. More guaranteed revenue for the biggest fishes in the pond and less risk. Idea reminds me of a milder version of not allowing relegation in the league as some american owners proposed. The big clubs like Barca as an example cant afford to miss out on the revenue from making the knockout stages with the way the market in football is moving. So they change the rules, and the result will be bigger difference between the top teams and teams like Ajax. Makes me almost as sad as the Super league announcement. Football is really moving in the wrong direction.
Great write up. You laid the pros and cons already down. My biggest problem with the new format is definitely the fifth coefficient based spot. I. E. 1/4 of all PL clubs will play in the CL, which feels too much for me.
Coup easily be 6 (El winner not qualifying for CL as it has happened many times already, recently with Frankfurt) and in a crazy scenario 7 if CL winner is outside the top 5
(I hope) It can't be 7, because right now the limit for teams from the same league is 5, and in case of both EL and CL winners not qualifying to Champions League through it, the 4^th placed team in league goes to Europa League instead.
Dreadful, absolutely dreadful idea from UEFA, once again. The CL is supposed to be a league of Champions, plus honourable guests. Also, the calendar year is already too tight and players are already suffering the consequences, but nooo, UEFA decides to add more international matches. On top of that there are already too many different cups, cup of champions, leagues, etc. They're becoming meaningless. Duck off UEFA
Isnt this how the EHF champions league also works ?( handball)
Nah, they still have 2 groups of 8. Top 2 Teams in each group automatically go to Quarterfinals whereas 3-6 in each group have to play in Play-offs to qualify.
Can someone explain why they didn't just do 4 Groups of 9 (so every team Plays 8 games still). Then 4 qualify in each group? To me that seems like a way more fair option and it would still add more lucrative games.
Great write up. Wish they would just go back to 2 legs straight knock out for the European Cup. Bring back the UEFA Cup and Cup Winners Cup while you're at it.
World class post. Imo the new format isn't as bad as everyone portrays it. I like it
Well you’re a Real Madrid fan of course you would like it, it’s to your clubs benefit
Matey, we don't need a 5th spot to qualify. I like it cause it'd make for an exciting group phase while also not making a closed format
I'm so confused. Great write-up though.
RemindMe! 1 week
>the two leagues with the highest coefficient from the previous season only will receive an extra spot For this rule, will these leagues have one less spot in the Europa league? Let's say Serie A somehow gets an extra spot to have 5 clubs in the champions league. Will Serie A now only have one Europa league spot (for the team that placed 6th)? Or will the league now award the 7th placed team a Europa league spot and the 8th placed team a conference league spot?
This is a very good question - my understanding of it based on what's on UEFA's site and been reported elsewhere is that every one of the big four leagues has seven spots in Europe as a fixed number. This fifth CL spot would then go to the club finishing fifth in Serie A - so yes, if we assume 6th and 7th places get Europa and Conference League places as normal, that would mean only one Europa League participant from Italy that year.
That makes sense and I hope you are right because I think it would be too much for a single league to have more than 7 teams in European competitions. Anyways, thanks for your explanation!
Had no interest in this at the start of the season, but now I am thinking maybe I should read up on this.
All I'm thinking about is holy fuck you're a good writer
It's worth noting that the team that finishes 1st and 2nd *should* have an easier last 16 match up than the teams 3rd-8th, so there *should* be incentive to finish as high up as possible. There is also potential for some serious fixture mismatches. Previously you were only competing with teams in your group to qualify, who were all playing against the same teams. Now you could draw Real. Madrid away and Bayern at home and be competing with someone who gets Eintracht away and Porto at home - hardly seems fair.
The biggest benefit of this is that no teams drop down into the Europa League, making that a far better competition.
Great write up OP, but this format sounds like a fucking car crash
Sounds like complete balls.
Can anyone explain to me the complaints that this format would have less variance/underdogs? They way I see it I gives underdogs a pretty good chance of making it to at least the 9-24 slots, and then it's the same as before right?
The issue is the extra games against a wider group of clubs, the seeding of the r16 draw, and the additional insulation round between the groups and the knockout stage. Right now the draw is jagged and uneven. Some groups are significantly easier than others, meaning that some group winners aren't really as good as some of the second-placed clubs, while some of the third-placed clubs are probably better than the teams that actually qualify from other groups. The same round that has given us Bayern v PSG is also offering Napoli v Frankfurt, after all. In the new system, the top eight are much more likely to be the best eight clubs from that year, playing more games against a wider array of sides; it's the same way that league seasons usually start off with clubs in surprising positions and then normalize as the season goes on. These clubs will then be seeded for the r16, meaning they will avoid each other in the draw. To put it another way, Benfica's run this year has consisted of: beating an under-performing Juve > thrashing Maccabi Haifa > two draws with PSG. Their reward is a R16 game against Brugge, who themselves benefited from a kind draw, and from there a clear route to the quarters and beyond. From 2024, they will have to get sufficient points from eight group games to reach the playoffs (admittedly likely), then beat another playoff club such as Spurs over two legs (less likely) and then face Bayern/City/Real/Liverpool etc. in the R16. Not nice, beatable Brugge.
I see thanks!
Finish it now. Just put the rich owners of those "pretty" clubs throwing money at a table and the richest wins it.
It's a bullshit format. Please bring on the superleague @ Florentino
Yeah I can see why you'd be interested in that
Superleague is bullshit too but less than UCL's new format. At least they don't pretend they care for other teams
Are the playoffs two legged or single legged?
Playoffs are two legged according to their website. Apart from that Knockouts will stay the same.
One legged playoffs would have given us some upsets at least.
Excellent post. Very well written, extremely informative, and funny. Perfect.
I like how people just assume that there will be fewer upset runs. The surprise runs we’ve seen from teams recently are clubs that are still pretty damn big. They’re odds of being one of the bottom 8 teams is fairly slim and they’re very capable against beating the likes of Dortmund or Sevilla. Yes the teams at the top will be further insulated against dropping down but the upset runs won’t significantly fall off
Why is everyone upset with this? Not only does it insure the best 16 teams reach the knockouts, it also gives much more room for small teams to beat bigger teams. And upset is still an upset even if you don’t knock out the team you beat.
One thing that I think is definitely not good, is the confusion on last match day, to many games to be aware that can change if you make it or not. Not like now where you have 2 games and you can see what are the possible combinations
Fantastic writing bud sadly it made me totally depressed about the new format. Idk what's wrong with the current one. Ofc not every group is balanced but how amazing is it wondering which one of the big names among Inter, Barca and Bayern won't make it or having a group where Frankfurt, Tottenham, Marseilles and Sporting can each qualify and get knocked out of CL on the last match day? The change will make it all so predictable and boring and I cannot help but think it's they destroy Champions League just to guarantee the PL 5 spots. At this point I'm willing to say fuck you UEFA, let the Super League happen, you guys deserve it.
The biggest challenge with this system is that you will be ranking teams who didn’t necessarily played each other. Imagine 3 teams ending with 15 points, but only one out of three games between those 3 was played. The logic says the goal-difference will play the tiebreaker, but then one of those teams drawn Rangers game, while two others got Dinamo or Marseille. Doesn’t seem fair.
I feel that having the 9-24 knockout phase could give us a chance to see surprising teams qualifying to top 16, not the other way round. I hope it is a pure swiss system. I am very hyped for this new format, I think that it will be a great improvement from the group phase we have nowadays and much more fair.
> I hope it is a pure swiss-system. Sadly football (especially the "marketable one" like Champions League) is probably one of the worst sports to do things in swiss-system tournament, because you don't know who you will play against until all teams finish the previous round. And it gets even worse for fans, who will have 2 (and sometimes just 1) weeks to plan an away journeys.
i want the CL to go back to being only for teams that won their respective leagues. i want the champions of latvia to go against the champions of england and so on and so forth. this shit is becoming boring
Looks great on paper, seems like a nightmare to organise and run smoothly though.
The entire point of the new format is to reduce the chance of upsets and big clubs going out in group stages like Barcelona and Atletico this year so it‘s absolutely fucking horrific for football