What You Need To Know About The New UEFA Champions League Format Starting In The 2024/25 Season

ahead of the 2024 25 season UFA are making a lot of changes to their three biggest Club competitions massive change to the format of the Champions League which is also naturally going to affect the format of the Europa League and the Europa conference League after several decades of group stages in the Champions League they're going to be no more they're going to be replaced by something called The League stage it's not going to be groups of four anymore it is going to be one big league consisting of all the teams somewhat similar to what they have in the Euro league for those of you watch European basketball it is similar in the sense that there's going to be a big table consisting of all the teams combined and overall because of this change we're going to get a lot more matches being played along with a little bit more teams competing as well and essentially in uefa's eyes more matches being played equals more money so the past few years based on the rise and fall of the Super League if you guys remember which the idea behind it was basically for the bigger and best teams to play each other more and UFA understood this that fans are looking for more big Gam gam so that's what they're going to do with this new format at the end of the day that does make them more money so they're not complaining instead of eight groups of four teams each leading to 32 total teams in the competition the champions league is going to start consisting of 36 teams so an extra four teams are going to be competing that one big table is going to consist of all 36 teams in the competition but not all teams are actually going to be playing each other despite being in the same table and instead of the old format having six total games in this stage three home and three away that's being increased to eight total gains which are four home and four away now since we have one big table and we don't have just three other opponents in each group to play the matches and opponents are going to be determined in a draw with four different seeding pots meaning there will be nine teams in each seating pot I like to think of the seating pots as sort of like tiers and basically each team will face two opponents from each tier so two opponents from tier a tier B and tier C and tier D and that will complete the eight total games they have in the league phase as we said that makes for a lot more big matches in the league phase cuz if you think about it a team from tier a has to face two other teams from the same tier so also tier a already in the league phase of this competition meaning we can get Real Madrid Bayern Munich or Man City Bayern Munich and it's actually very smart cuz if you think about it these smaller and more inexperience teams also have a big chance of getting more points in this competition cuz they're going to face other teams in the same game tier I see this as a win-win situation cuz smaller teams have more of an opportunity while football fans get more big games which is always good the UCL is going to go from a total of 125 games to 189 games per season not counting of course qualifiers qualifying format is going to stay pretty much the same the only difference is whichever teams qualify from that go into a league phase instead of a group phase now where do the 36 teams come from since we have four extra spots so they're going to get an extra extra team coming from the qualifiers instead of four teams qualifying it's going to be five teams now the UCL champions from the previous season get an automatic ticket to the league phase the next season also the champion of the Europa League gets a ticket to the champions league league phase the 10 domestic champions in the top 10 domestic leagues across Europe they get an automatic ticket to the league phase and also the domestic runner-ups in the top six leagues across Europe so if the league is ranked top six in Europe the runner up of That League is automatic going to get a ticket to the Champions League also on top of that we have five teams that finish third in their domestic league if that league is considered within the top five domestic leagues in Europe and then four teams that finished fourth in their domestic league but that league has to be within the top four domestic leagues in Europe and then a couple more teams mainly based on the countries and the team's coefficients in European competitions now the main and most important structure of this whole league phase that we now have after the eight matches in the league phase of this competition teams finishing between first and eighth place directly qualify for the round of 16 knockout then teams finishing in places 9th through 24th actually have to play each other in a special playoff knockout round in order to get to the round of 16 similar structure to what they have in the Europa League and the Europa conference league with the round of 32 before the round of 16 I believe they're also implementing something like this in the upcoming World Cup in 2026 and finally teams finishing between between 25th and 36th will automatically be eliminated from all competitions they can't go to the Europa League or the conference League they are completely out and because of this one big table so much relies on the gold differential because some teams can actually be on top of one another because of gold difference and so that's really going to impact on the positioning if the table is tight which I feel like it will be this also solves a pretty big issue of the last games of the group stage just being absolutely pointless for some team that have already qualified and so all games matter we're not going to get a situation where Bayern Munich is already qualified in the fourth game and then they could just lay back and just play their substitutes with the last two games being pretty much pointless cuz they're already securing first place this is going to be nearly impossible with this new format I feel like that's a huge win for football fans that just want to see games that actually matter in their best players playing also important to note that the rule of two teams from the same country not being able to play each other that rule is completely gone so technically we could get Real Madrid against Barcelona in the league phase or the round of 16 we don't have to wait until the late stages for two teams from the same country to face each other now the specific structure of the new playoff knockout round which is essentially just around the 32 it's going to work similar to the play in tournament they have in the NBA and in the Euro league and so basically 9th Place is going to be playing 24th 10th is going to be playing 23rd and so on the higher your team is is ranked in this stage the lower the opponent's rank is going to be that you're going to have to play the winners of this round will join the top eight that have already previously qualified for the round of 16 and you would think the losers of the playoff knockout round would get demoted to the Europa League but that is not happening anymore The Losers of this round are completely out just like places 25th through 36th basically as a team in the Champions League you cannot get demoted to the Europa League and the Europa conference League after the qualifiers the qualifiers is the only stage where you can actually get demoted one by one until you are possibly completely out of the competition if you lose in the conference League qualifiers dropping leagues between the Champions League Europa League and Europa conference league is getting less popular and after this really substantial change with the Champions League the conference league is going to be built a bit different and it's going to be six total matches each of the teams in that league is going to be drawn against one opponent from each of the six seated pots so the difference between the Champions League format and the conference League format is that they have six different seated pots in the conference League compared to four in the Champions League all of course based on the club's coefficients which is basically their performance and how well they do in Europe in the previous Seasons three matches played at home and then three matches played away what do you think about this big change that UEFA is doing I do actually think it's a really good change because it doesn't change it too much like The Knockouts is still a round to 16 quarter semi and final but essentially this just spices up the main stage of the competition the league phase which used to be the group phase it makes it more interesting and every game actually matters so I do think this is a very positive change if you want on to find this video informative drop a like on it and subscribe if you are new to the channel we're building an awesome football loving community so feel free to be a part of it debate Down Below in the comments what you guys think and your different opinions about this huge change another UFA competition that I made a video about is the Euro 2024 prediction video so click the video on screen now for it I hope you all enjoy that video and peace