UEFA is expected to act next March on the evolution of the Champions League format as we know it.
From 2024, the most prestigious continental competition should take on a new form, which raises questions and criticism.
Concretely, how will this happen?
Today, 32 teams have qualified for the final phase of the Champions League, and are divided into eight groups of four.
In 2024, exit the hens according to L'Equipe.
The number of qualifiers should increase to 36 and at the same time reshape the format of the first round.
There would be no more groups, all the teams would be in the same championship.
However, the 36 clubs will not face each other, but the number of matches per team will drop from six currently (two-way matches) to ten.
Goodbye to the concept of going back and forth in the group stage.
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Each qualifier will face ten opponents, five at home and five away.
To determine who will play against whom, the hat system will be used with the same distribution as in 2021. The domestic champions from the previous season will constitute hat 1, and the other three hats will be determined according to the UEFA coefficient of each qualifying team. .
According to L'Equipe, a team in hat 1 will face two other seeded clubs with it, three teams in hat 2, three in hat 3 and two in hat 2.
At the end of the ten matches, the first eight in the standings will qualify for the round of 16.
The last eight tickets will be distributed via a round-trip jump-off between the teams classified from 9th to 24th place.
A sort of round of 16.
The last twelve, as well as the formations eliminated in the play-offs will not be transferred to the Europa League.
A C3 which should also change with the disappearance of this bridge between the two competitions, but also the probable organization of C1 matches on Thursday.
With four more matches on the program per qualifier, the first phase of the Champions League should extend until January.
A boon for French clubs?
Until now, France could only send two teams plus one to C1 if it took advantage of advantageous circumstances in C3, or if it passed the preliminary rounds.
With this new formula, we should see three French clubs directly qualified plus a team through these preliminary rounds.
Breadcrumb for French football in need of good news lately.
France would therefore automatically recover one of the four additional tickets offered by UEFA, provided it maintains its fifth place in the European ranking.
Far behind Germany and with a relatively comfortable mattress over Portugal, there is a good chance that the French will retain this position.
Be careful though, the mattress that separates us from the Portuguese could become a ground sheet in the event of poor performance in European Cups in the coming seasons.
The European campaign of French clubs this year proves that a turnaround is not inconceivable.
The clubs in France will not be able to say that they have not been warned ...
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A response to the European Superleague?
If UEFA is reinventing itself so often, and especially at the moment, it is also to stop the creation of a European Superleague.
A little constrained and forced before the pressure of the richest and most influential clubs of the Old Continent.
A closed championship, between European leaders, which has the favors of these big clubs.
The European body is doing everything in its power to dissuade them from taking action.
First, they are threatened by warning them that any player participating in a European Superleague match will no longer be able to wear the jersey of his national team.
They were warned that they could no longer participate in their national championship.
Then, we stroke them in the direction of the hair with this reform of the Champions League, which looks like a closed league of at least twenty clubs.
They are promised a guaranteed ticket to the two clubs with the highest UEFA coefficient who have failed to qualify for the Champions League via the championship.
There will also be more matches (180 matches instead of 96 today in the first round) and therefore TV rights which will still ignite.
Translation: an increasingly closed competition, reserved for an elite, with more matches, more revenue and therefore a substantial financial windfall.
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Athletes' bodies in danger?
This number of additional matches will not necessarily delight players and club staff.
Already complaining of a very busy schedule between the championship, the European Cup and the national cups, we add four matches over the same period.
If the first phase stretches until January, the schedule will be untenable and the numbers will have to be drastically inflated to compensate for this surplus of meetings.
In 2021, to win the C1, you have to play thirteen matches, with the 2024 version, you will have to play 17 or 19 (through the round of 16) matches to hope to lift the cup with big ears.
No doubt by sticking out the tongue.
Last November, Jürgen Klopp had already complained about this insane schedule: “Everyone knows that it's too much to play so many games: the Premier League and all the other competitions at the same time.
Of course it is too much.
Nobody wants to touch it and I don't understand that ”.
Complaints that UEFA authorities have taken care to ignore.
And the public in all this?
With these reforms, one can wonder if the public will not be in overdose of matches.
In indigestion large posters.
Each year the biggest teams will play against other heavyweights on the continent, and with the disappearance of the groups of four where every game is important, the notion of a chopper game could fade.
The public could get bored and lose, despite themselves, all the excitement of a meeting with the important stake.
This accumulation of meetings will force the qualifiers to run their team in the league.
Fans of these clubs might be disappointed with the spectacle their club will put on on weekends versus midweek.
Paradoxically, this obligation to spare its best players in the league could benefit the smaller teams, which could therefore shake up the national hierarchy, and win their ticket for the European marathon the following season.
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