The Chaaaaaaaaaampions League, we can never overlook this tone and nor the nail biting fixtures such as Roma’s revival against Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur against Ajax or Barcelona’s ridiculous and heroic resurgence against PSG. The away goals in the tournament kept the fixture compelling and realistic, but from this season onwards, they have scrapped the away goal rule. Some have questioned this decision while some are in favour of this. Nevertheless, UCL gave us some marvelous games like Real’s victory against PSG at the Bernabeu, Benfica knocking Barcelona and Ajax out of the competition and Ronaldo’s last-minute save to carry Man United in the contention until they got knocked out by Simeone’s men.
Some slight variations in the game haven’t influenced the game, but it is going to transform wholly from 2024-25 period onwards. It would enter into a new television contract and raft of various commercial agreements.
We all have questions such as What the Champions League looks like, why the need, the working procedure; so without wasting anymore time let’s dig in!
The new format is usually pointed out to as the Swiss Model which means clubs play a set number of games rather than facing every other team in the league and is widely adopted in sports such as chess where league, group-stage or straight-knockout formats are ill-suited.
36 (4-additional new clubs would join the new format) teams would succeed the 32-team group stage into one giant league stand.
Each competing club would play 10 league game: 5-Home and 5-Away. A seeding structure would figure the fixtures out based on clubs ranked on performance in the preceding UCLs.
Once, every club completes their 10 league games, the top 8 of the list would advance to the later round while the remaining sides would play a play-off, from which 8 sides would accompany the other and establish a 16-side knock-out round.
This shift in the format provides more chances for teams to qualify for the next round. Previously, under the 32 team based model, 16 of those teams gets eliminated just after mere 6 games, but under the new format, it assured them 4 extra games to proceed. From a monetary standpoint, Europe’s elite club plays each other more often, which means higher ticket sales, a substantial television market for sponsors and an opportunity to earn bonus money.
The competition has now expanded from 32 to 36 clubs, which means 4 new teams would join and assuming the rule, these 4 spots would go the next best domestic league based on UEFA Coefficient ranking. But that’s not the case. The 1 spot would be reserved to Ligue-1 presenting them at equal position with England, Germany, Spain and Italy.
1 spot would be allocated to a team that performed well in recent champions league. For example, in 2019, Ajax reached the UCL semi-final but was not assured a spot for next year’s edition. They had to go through qualifying rounds to make it the group stage as Eredivisie doesn’t guarantee a Champions League spot. The remaining 2 spaces are going to be extremely controversial as they are going to be a safeguard for underperforming clubs. They would set aside the spaces for the teams with the best club coefficient based on performances in Europe over previous 5 seasons and managed to finish within 5th to 7th position in the league. Clubs such as Arsenal would feature regularly in the tournament. The extra zones would also mean that Europe’s top-4 league could wind up with 6 squads in the UCL.
The extra capacity handed over to them would again mean that third ranked teams in Russia or Netherlands and runner-ups in Switzerland and Greece may not feature in the game, instead a 7th placed a club in La Liga or Serie A would feature; comparable to Super League, where only Europe’s rich and elite clubs would feature.
The modification would be extensible, meaning more games to be played, with football’s calender already congested. How will UEFA accommodate the schedule is a question to be asked.
0 comments:
Post a Comment