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Introduction
To forestall the establishment of a European Super League, the Champions League is set to expand for the 2024/2025 season, with the number of participating teams expanding from 32 to 36.
Each side that qualifies is now guaranteed a minimum of eight games as opposed to six, which, given the money involved in the competition, will be a welcome addition to their bank balance.
However, accommodating these extra teams and games also means changing the format because the old system, in which teams were initially split into four groups, no longer serves the purpose.
Instead, UEFA has adopted the Swiss model, which may take fans, players, and coaches some time to understand.
The European Super League
The football world was rocked in April 2021 when 12 clubs announced their intention to break away from their own domestic leagues and form their own tournament. The backlash was intense from fans, commentators, the press, and governments. Bowing to the pressure, nine clubs, including those from the Premier League, hastily backtracked and withdrew from the project.
Juventus also pulled out of the European Super League (ESL) last year, but Real Madrid and Barcelona remain committed to the idea. After various legal challenges, the European Court of Justice ruled that previous attempts to block it were contrary to European Union law.
Whilst the future direction of the ESL is uncertain, UEFA, European Football's governing body, decided to address some of the key concerns of the project's instigators by agreeing to revamp their flagship competition in a bid to offer major clubs a bigger share of the revenue pie.
It remains to be seen whether that will be enough to end the ESL concept or is merely a means of kicking the tun can down the road for several years.
The Champions League
The Champions League has already demonstrated a capacity for expansion.
When founded in 1955 as the European Cup, it was intended just to be a competition for the winners of the respective domestic leagues. When it was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992 – 93, so did the competing teams' composition, which was expanded to include the top three or four finishers in the major European leagues from the previous season based on their UEFS coefficient.
Now, with four more teams being added for next season, Italy and Spain will each have five representatives in the tournament.
The Swiss model
The current group stages of the Champions League will be scrapped in favor of a single league featuring all 36 teams.
Under the so-called Swiss model, each team plays a certain number of games rather than facing every other team in the league.
Teams will be split into four pots and face two opponents from each pot.
Teams will be seeded with the intention that they should play roughly an equal number of games against high, medium, and low-ranked sides.
Once they have completed their eight fixtures, the top eight sides will progress to the knock-out stages and the round of 16. As an additional bonus, they will automatically qualify for next season's Champions League.
The teams that finish in positions nine to twenty-four would enter a play-off round, home and away, to determine the other eight teams that will contest the round of 16. Those that finish 25th and below are automatically eliminated.
The round of 16 will again be seeded, with the automatic qualifiers having home advantage in the second leg.
Meanwhile, the safety net of dropping into the Europa League is removed for those who fail to win their play-off ties. They will now be eliminated.
More heavyweight clashes earlier
One advantage for fans from the previous format is that, with teams facing sides from the same pot twice in the group stages, there will be more heavyweight clashes between major contenders earlier in the competition. Previously, they were kept apart by seedings at the group stage.
It is also hoped that the new format will add an element of excitement that is often missing from the group stages.
Whilst there can be the occasional group of death – last year Borussia Dortmund, PSG, AC Milan, and Newcastle United were all drawn together – in most cases, it is a case of two richer teams playing less well-off sides, with the reasonable expectation that they will progress.
And that means, for many, the competition only comes alive when it reaches the knock-out stages.
Already qualified
Twenty-nine of the teams that will be taking part have already qualified, with the remaining seven places to be filled after qualifying rounds featuring teams from the lesser-ranked European leagues.
That process is already underway and is scheduled to be concluded by August 28th.
The draw for the main competition will take place the following day at UEFA headquarters in Nyon.
French club Brest and Spanish side Girona, who will make their European debuts simultaneously, are among those who are guaranteed a place.
The number of games
The change in format means that the number of games played in the Champions League will increase next season to 189, 64 more than last season. Forty-eight additional games will come in the group stages, while the play-off round accounts for the other 16.
The minimum number of games a team needs to win the Champions League will also increase from 13 to 15. Should a side battle their way through the play-off route, it could potentially even be more.
The seeding pots
Teams will be seeded based on their performance in European competitions over the past five years.
Based on this criteria, the teams featured in Pot One are Manchester City, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, PSG, Liverpool, Inter Milan, RB Leipzig, and Barcelona.
Pot Two will feature Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Bayer Leverkusen, Atalanta, Benfica and one other, probably AC Milan.
Pots 3 and 4 are currently more fluid in composition, although Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon and PSV Eindhoven seemed destined for the former, and Sturm Graz and Brest for the latter.
Celtic, Monaco, Girona, and Bologna must wait for the outcome of the qualifying rounds to learn their fate.
The final
The final will be played at the Allianz Arena in Munich on May 31st, 2025. The ground previously hosted the final in 2012, when Chelsea upset the home side to snatch victory courtesy of a penalty shootout.
Will the fans understand it?
One advantage the old format had in its favor was that it was easy to understand. A glance at the group table told them all they needed to know about how their team was progressing and what they needed to do to qualify for the group.
The new system will be more complicated and may take some getting used to. It may not be until towards the end that the likely finishing order becomes clear.
Meanwhile, teams not involved in the Champions League will watch on with both envy and a certain degree of resentment.
Domestic tournaments like the League and FA Cups have already been curtailed to accommodate the expanded competition, and the income gap between those involved and the others is likely to grow further.
It will only become clear in time whether this will be enough to satisfy the greed of those backing the ESL.
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