The Champions League is coming towards a conclusion with the end of the semi-final stage this week — but this is one of the last campaigns in which the competition will be played under the current format.
At a meeting in Vienna just over a year ago, the UEFA Executive Committee signed off on a new format. There had been two years of intense debate over how it would work and followed several years of politicking between Europe’s biggest sides.
Now it will be implemented from the start of the 2024-25 season, with more teams taking part and more games. The continent’s biggest sides are likely to benefit from the new format as they fight to qualify next campaign — the first in which the qualification process is based on the expanded competition.
Teams from the same nations could also meet far sooner, and there is a world in which fans will be left cheering on their domestic rivals to aid their own hopes. The Athletic breaks down what’s changed and what it all means…
What will the Champions League look like from 2024-25?
The number of teams competing in the competition will increase from 32 to 36, meaning there will now be 189 matches instead of 125, and the group stage will be replaced by a league phase — otherwise known as the “Swiss model”.
Each team will be guaranteed to play eight matches in the league phase, down from the proposed 10 after talks in Vienna, of which they will play half at home and half away.
The top eight sides in the league will qualify automatically for the knockout stage. Those finishing in ninth to 24th will compete in a two-legged play-off to determine who reaches the last-16 of the competition.
Two of the extra four slots in the competition will be awarded to nations whose clubs achieve the best collective performance in the season before. To work this out, the total points earned will be divided by the number of sides competing in European club competitions.
This is a notable move away from the much-maligned and heavily criticised five-year historical coefficients.
If the new rules had been applied to the current 2022-23 season, the two extra places would go to clubs from England and the Netherlands. In three of the past four campaigns, a team in the Premier League would have received one of the additional slots. As it stands, for next season’s qualification process, they will go to England and Italy.
In theory, in some years the Premier League could end up with a total of seven teams in the Champions League due to the coefficient spot awarded on performance and the winners of Europe’s biggest club competition and the Europa League (should those clubs not otherwise qualify automatically.)
In another change, clubs from the same country will now be able to play against each other in the early knockout stages. Domestic clashes are currently blocked until the quarter-finals.
The eight league-style matches will be spread over 10 weeks, a decision that was made last year, and it will mean the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League will have an exclusive week dedicated to their tournament.
How is that different to what we have at the moment?
Each team who reaches the Champions League proper currently plays in a four-team group stage, with the top two teams reaching the knockout stages. The third-placed side drops into the Europa League.
Those who advance then play in the knockout rounds, and if a team can progress through the last-16 stage, the quarter-final, the semi-final and win the final, they are crowned the champions of Europe.
One element that will not be changing when the new system is introduced in 2024 is the two-legged semi-finals.
The Times reported last year that “momentum is building for two-legged Champions League semi-finals to be scrapped, with leading European clubs backing a plan to play the semis and final over a single week in one city”.
However, that is unlikely to be implemented any time soon, with UEFA committed to keeping them in place for the foreseeable future.
How does this impact qualification from the Premier League?
As it stands, four Premier League teams can qualify for the Champions League, but such is the English top flight’s dominance, they are almost certainly guaranteed five slots from 2024 onwards.
The Premier League will be delighted that they are almost guaranteed to have five Champions League places instead of four.
You would also expect Spain, Germany and Italy to be relatively satisfied with the new format as the second extra spot is likely to end up going to either La Liga, the Bundesliga or Serie A.
Despite there being bonus points for being in the Champions League as opposed to the Europa League or Europa Conference League, a smaller country could still earn one of the coefficient places.
Who will be annoyed?
There is a school of thought that UEFA were only listening to the Premier League and La Liga when it came to ditching the 10-game league phase and reducing it to eight matches.
France’s Ligue 1 wanted 10 games and not club coefficients. They wrote to UEFA and the European Club Association (ECA) to say that is why they reduced their domestic league to 18: they anticipated an increase in European games.
They did not like club coefficients, though. They wanted one of the two extra places to be given to a domestic champion from a mid-sized league and the other one to the fifth-biggest league so it had four spots, like the top four leagues. At the moment, the fifth-best league is Ligue 1.
It essentially boils down to every league being greedy and wanting more, but the new format will offer balance and should encourage teams playing in either of UEFA’s three club competitions to go as far as possible and earn coefficient points for their country.
What does it mean for Premier League clubs?
Premier League sources — speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their positions — last year welcomed UEFA’s decision to drop the historical coefficient places and reduce the number of group-stage matches from 10 to eight.
Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, is thought to have worked hard with UEFA on the proposals and this will go down as a win on his behalf.
There is now a very real prospect that England’s top flight will have eight teams competing in European club competitions every season, which is good news for those outside of the established ‘Big Six’.
The rhetoric concerning the race to finish in the top four is now likely to change to the top five, and that will come as a boost to the sides trying to break into the established elite.
The changes should also satisfy disgruntled club executives who criticised the historical coefficient proposals as deeply unfair and putting a glass ceiling on what they could achieve.
Making it based on the country coefficient takes away the club argument.
There is, however, an argument to suggest that the financial gap between the smaller-sized teams and bigger sides will only grow bigger due to the new Champions League format. This is down to the potential of an additional spot as well as increased broadcast revenue from the competition.
How will clubs benefit financially?
Last week, UEFA suggested that they hoped for a rise in revenue of about 33 per cent for their revamped club competitions.
The Champions League currently brings in €3.6billion (£3.13bn; $3.9bn) for each of the three seasons between 2021 and 2024.
When speaking about projected revenue last Tuesday, UEFA competitions director Giorgio Marchetti said: “We are working on (both) conservative and more optimistic projections in a range I would say between €4.6billion and €4.8bn.”
UEFA is in discussions with the ECA and the European Leagues groups to decide how to distribute the extra prize money.
How did it come about?
Talks over a dramatic reform to the Champions League, which were often heated and bitter, have been ongoing since 2019.
There has been more than enough political manoeuvring from Europe’s biggest teams, culminating in the failed European Super League attempt in April 2021.
Had the historical coefficient proposals gone through, it would have essentially made the Champions League a closed shop — something the Super League would have been for Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona among others.
Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli was a key figure in the plan and, in recent times, has witnessed his historically great side fall behind state-backed clubs such as Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.
Last March, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin described the failed Super League plot as a “non-football project” and will view the new 2024 format as a win over the clubs who conspired to implement seismic changes to European football.
UEFA knows its competition is not as marketable without Real Madrid, Barcelona and other European giants competing in it, so it was about finding a mutually agreeable compromise and moving forward.
“We are convinced that the format chosen strikes the right balance and that it will improve the competitive balance and generate solid revenues that can be distributed to clubs, leagues and into grassroots football across our continent,” Ceferin said last May.
What about the Europa League and Europa Conference League? What’s changed there?
Similar format changes will be applied to both competitions.
The Europa League is doing away with the traditional group stage and replacing it with the league phase, with each team having to play eight matches.
Clubs competing in the Europa Conference League will play six matches in the league stage.
Both competitions will start with 36 teams.
(Top image design: Sam Richardson, Photo: KERSTIN JOENSSON/AFP via Getty Images)
