How the new Champions League format works

This is the final season of the current Champions League format with the competition changing significantly from 2024-25.

At a meeting in Vienna in 2022, 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 have been fighting to make the most of the new format as it is this season’s results that will determine the make-up of next term’s expanded competition.

The Athletic breaks down the changes and what they all mean…

What will the Champions League look like from 2024-25?

The number of teams competing will increase from 32 to 36, meaning there will 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 for the knockout stage. Those finishing in ninth to 24th will compete in two-legged play-offs to determine who joins the top eight in the last-16.

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.

Clubs from England looked well placed to gain one of the extra Champions League places, but they are set to be beaten by Italy and Germany whose teams have outperformed them across the three UEFA competitions.

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 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 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?

In the current state, each team reaching the Champions League proper has played in a four-team group stage, with the top two teams reaching the knockout stages. The third-placed side has then dropped 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 in 2022 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 will expect to have five teams competing under the new format.

However, for the 2024-25 season, it looks like it will be the usual four spots for England. This comes after Manchester United and Newcastle United finished bottom of their Champions League groups while Arsenal and Manchester City were eliminated in the quarter-finals.

Performances in the Europa League did not help. Brighton were eliminated by Roma in the last-16 while quarter-final defeats for Liverpool and West Ham all but put the nail in the coffin of England’s hopes of an extra Champions League spot.

Instead, Italy raced into first place in UEFA’s coefficient ranking and they will have five teams in next season’s Champions League. The same is likely to be true of Germany who are the only nation with two Champions League semi-finalists as well as Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League final four.

Holders Manchester City were knocked out on penalties by Real Madrid (Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

Who will be annoyed?

There is a school of thought that UEFA was 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 club coefficients not being used. Ligue 1 wrote to UEFA and the European Club Association (ECA) to say that is why it reduced its domestic league to 18: it anticipated an increase in European games.

Ligue 1 did not like club coefficients, though. It 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 that time, the fifth-best league was Ligue 1.

It essentially boils down to every league 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?

At the time of the decision, Premier League sources — speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their positions — 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 it will have gone down as a win on his behalf.

There is a real prospect England’s top flight will have eight teams competing in European club competitions most seasons, which is good news for those outside of the established ‘Big Six’.

The rhetoric concerning the race to finish in the top four has already shifted to the top five. But, despite the boost to the sides trying to break into the established elite, that remains a top-four race in the immediate term.

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?

In May 2023, UEFA suggested it hoped for a rise in revenue of about 33 per cent for its revamped club competitions.

The Champions League brings in €3.6billion (£3.13bn; $3.9bn) for each of the three seasons between 2021 and 2024.

When speaking about projected revenue, 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 has been 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, had been ongoing since 2019.

There had 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.

In March 2022, 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 in May 2022.

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)