UEFA will set next Wednesday the format of the Champions League after 2024, a radical overhaul discussed for several months and which should earn France an additional place, announced Friday the European Leagues association.
On this crucial subject for European football, as the big clubs have waved the threat of launching their own private “Superleague”, the body will decide “during its executive committee on March 31,” Lars-Christer Olsson told reporters. , president of this organization bringing together around thirty professional leagues.
UEFA had not yet formalized the date of this meeting, which will be preceded the day before by a "club competitions commission" responsible for settling the final details, said Olsson.
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However, many questions remain about this reform, which should see the queen competition go from 32 to 36 clubs and abandon the current group stage comprising 8 groups of 4 clubs, in favor of a "mini-championship" within a unique group.
If an additional ticket should be granted to France, the distribution of the other three is hotly debated between the European Leagues and some big clubs, anxious to secure their place in C1.
A system based on the “UEFA coefficient” would, for example, favor Arsenal, Dortmund or Chelsea for the benefit of their European history, even after a failed season, while the European Leagues are pushing to admit “champions from new countries”.
Two more matches per club?
The new group stage must also be refined: of course, everyone agrees on a move to the "Swiss system" inspired by chess, where each team would face a range of different opponents before switching to the knockout stage.
But the project which has been circulating since the end of 2020 provides for ten matches per club during this first stage, against six in the current group stage, i.e. one hundred additional matches throughout the competition.
Dubitative on the “sporting and financial” interest of this orgy of confrontations, European Leagues proposed “a compromise”, with “two more matches” per club instead of four, explained its general manager Jacco Swart.
It will remain to reconcile these new meetings with the international calendar, itself under discussion, while the boss of Fifa Gianni Infantino seeks to make room for his own "World Club" expanded to 24 teams ...
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