With the end of the last four play-offs, the 36 teams of the 24-25 season of the Champions League have all been decided. The much-anticipated Champions League draw ceremony will be held at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco in the early morning of August 30, Beijing time.
As we all know, this season’s Champions League will usher in the second competition system reform since the 2003/04 season, and the intensity of this reform will even exceed that of 21 years ago. Last time, the Champions League cancelled the second stage of the group stage; this time, UEFA ambitiously tried to make it a real champion “league”.
Now, let’s take a look at how the new season of the Champions League is played.
League + cup, brain-burning and exciting
Let’s first take a look at the biggest trick of the new version of the Champions League – the cancellation of the group stage. Under the new competition system, the participating teams of the Champions League will be expanded from the previous 32 to 36. All teams are only divided into grades but not groups, and are mixed together to form a “league”.
Specifically, the 36 teams are divided into four tiers, with 9 teams in each tier, based on their European points in the past five years. Although the traditional group stage has been cancelled, each team still has its own “group” and needs to play one game with two teams in each tier (a total of 8 teams) in a single round-robin format, totaling 8 games, 4 home and 4 away.
Because it is a single round-robin format to play 8 different opponents, there will be no second battle with the same team at this stage. There is no situation where you lose to a team away and then turn around to find your place at home, and then you want to play again to get to the knockout stage.
There are two more points to note:
First, the principle of avoiding the same country in the group stage of the old system is still valid here, and the English civil war or national derby will not be staged at this stage.
Second, regardless of the tier, opponents from the same league will only be drawn to two at most. If a non-La Liga team draws Atletico Madrid and Girona, it will not face Real Madrid, so the influence of the draw is still very large.
With this change, the rules immediately become complicated, and the impact is also very far-reaching. The most direct point is that there are more strong matches and they come earlier.
Take the defending champion Real Madrid as an example. The White Army may encounter Manchester City and Bayern Munich in the first tier, and then Juventus and Arsenal in the second tier…
So there may be more than one Real Madrid vs. Manchester City game at the beginning, which is terrifying.
After the top 16 teams are all produced, starting from the 1/8 finals, the competition system has returned to the familiar home and away two-round competition, and the final is still a one-game match at a neutral venue. Overall, the new version of the Champions League is a combination of a variant league + cup competition.
Chaotic battle royale, MAX difficulty in scoring
As a supporting role for the new league system, the draw mode and promotion rules of the first stage of the Champions League have also changed greatly.
Let’s talk about the draw first. Due to the unprecedented complexity of the competition system, the design of the draw has also become brain-burning. According to the calculation of Sky Sports reporters, if the previous manual draw is used, it will take 4 hours, requiring up to 1,000 balls and 36 glass bowls…
So UEFA waved its hand and switched to the draw software developed by a British company to complete this process on the computer.
In theory, the probability of error in a strictly set program is far less than that of manual, which can reduce the situation of making mistakes (like the draw for the 1/8 finals of the Champions League in the 2021/22 season). Of course, the actual effect will be known only after trying it.
All opponents of a team and the order of encounters will be determined at the same time as the draw results are announced. In other words, the new competition system of the Champions League is still somewhat different from the Swiss round that focuses on “determining opponents in real time in each round”.
After talking about the draw, let’s take a look at the promotion rules. In the league stage, although a team will only have an intersection with the other 8 opponents in the schedule, all 36 teams will compete in the same standings. After all 8 rounds, the top eight teams will directly advance to the knockout stage.
How will the remaining 8 places be decided? The answer is to arrange another round of playoffs (NBA fans will say it’s familiar).
The teams ranked 9-16 will be drawn and play two rounds with the teams ranked 17-24. The teams ranked higher will play away first and then at home. The specific rules are the same as the two-round knockout rounds of last season (that is, there is no away goal rule).
The playoffs seem to be drawn in a form that depends on luck, but in fact the range of the draw is very small. The 9th and 10th will draw the 23rd and 24th, the 11th and 12th will draw the 21st and 22nd, and so on. So the ranking is still very important, and the draw may be more to prevent overly deliberate selection of opponents.
The setting of the playoffs has unprecedentedly increased the number of teams competing for promotion. In theory, the 24th place can also go to the knockout rounds, and of course the 9th place may also be eliminated early, so the 8 direct places are precious.
In this case, the opportunities of small teams have increased. As long as they grab a position in the early 20th place, they have a chance to win in the playoffs.
Moreover, the new competition system is also good for small teams to grab points. After all, even a team in the fourth tier has two chances to play against opponents of the same tier, instead of being bullied by the three teams in the top three tiers as before. (For example, Victory Plzen, which is in the same group as Bayern, Inter Milan and Barcelona in the 2022/23 season, has something to say…)
The complex competition system and the huge standings consisting of 36 teams will make the entire qualifying situation confusing, especially the increase in strong dialogues and the possibility of early promotion are greatly reduced, and the suspense is kept to the last minute to the maximum extent.
Many direct competitors for promotion (play-off) places have not yet intersected in the schedule. Adding the interference of small variables such as goal difference and number of goals, it becomes even more difficult to help their home team predict the qualifying situation.
However, for Chinese fans who have been helping the national football team calculate points for many years, perhaps this is also a novel experience?
Killing all the players and making UEFA happy?
Another direct impact of the new competition system is that there are more games, and the total number of games has increased by more than half compared to the original. If a team wants to make it to the end, it used to need to play 13 games, but now it needs 15 or 17 games.
Considering that the schedule of various competitions is increasing (such as the new Club World Cup and FIFA Intercontinental Cup, which were also reformed this year), multi-line operations are tantamount to an extreme challenge, and it is no wonder that a group of players and coaches have complained.
Under such a dense schedule, teams with deeper benches and more rotations will undoubtedly gain greater advantages. So a team-building method like Chelsea, which hoards a lot of players, may reap miraculous results? Although Chelsea did not play in the Champions League this season… (but the Europa League and the UEFA League have also changed to this format, and Chelsea is currently expected to participate in the UEFA League)
The players complained, but UEFA was bubbling with beauty. More and more exciting games mean more money. If the new format is popular in the market, the already huge commercial value of the Champions League will surely rise to a higher level.
Of course, it’s not just about taking without giving. The prize money for the new Champions League will be increased accordingly, and each team will get a bigger share of the pie, so the competition for Champions League qualification in major domestic leagues will be more intense.
In any case, the brand new Champions League dish is about to be served on the table. Are you fans ready to start?