During its General Assembly meeting on Thursday in Paris, the European Football Association (UEFA) approved changing the current system for the group stage in the Champions League, which has continued for two decades.
The most important and strongest club-level tournament in Europe is scheduled to move to rely on the league system instead of the group stage, starting next season.
UEFA explained in a statement that it will replace the group system, which includes 32 teams divided into 8 groups, increasing the number to 36 teams in the new “league stage.”
In the new system, each team plays 8 matches against 8 different competitors (4 at home and 4 away from home), chosen through a draw from 4 different pots, and each pot contains 9 teams. The first pot will include the 2023-2024 Champions League champion with the 8 teams with the best UEFA rankings, not the teams winning the best European leagues as is currently the case. The other three pot teams are also chosen based on the UEFA classification at the end of this season, taking into account the past five seasons.
After the first stage (league stage), the 36 teams are ranked according to the points obtained, from first to 36th place, as if it were a league, and in the event of a tie in points, the tie is broken according to the criteria of average goals.
The top eight teams in this league qualify directly to the round of 16, and the 16 teams occupying positions from ninth to 24th will play against each other in a home-and-away system, with the winner qualifying for the round of 16.
From there, the Champions League will be exactly like the current format, with the winners advancing to the quarter-finals, then the semi-finals and finally the final.
In the first phase of the tournament with its new system, 144 matches will be held, compared to 96 matches played in the current group stage of the Champions League. In total, the teams will play 189 matches in the new system compared to 125 in the old system.
It should be noted that UEFA also agreed in its meeting today to change the format of the European League and the European Conference League, starting from the 2024/2025 season, as both competitions will include 36 teams.
The European Nations League draw places France and Italy in a hot group
The draw for the fourth edition of the European Nations League for the 2024-2025 season resulted in a fiery group in the first level, as France, the runner-up of the world champions, signed Belgium and Italy, the European champions.
The draw was drawn on Thursday in the French capital, Paris, where the teams were distributed among the four levels, with the introduction of a playoff for promotion and relegation between the levels, and the quarter-finals of two home-and-away matches in the first level.
As a result of topping its groups in the first level during the last edition and thus reaching the semi-finals, Spain, the defending champion, and its runners-up Croatia, Italy and the Netherlands, were classified in the first level of the draw, which received attention not witnessed in the previous three editions for the second level as a result of the presence of England, which came with its neighbor Ireland, Greece and Finland.
Italy, Belgium, and France were in the second group of the first level, accompanied by Israel, while Spain, the champion, was in the fourth group, alongside Denmark, Switzerland, and Serbia, and Croatia, the runner-up in the first, was accompanied by Portugal, champion of the first edition in 2019, Poland, and Scotland.
As for the Netherlands, which finished fourth in the last edition by losing the third-place match to Italy 2-3 at home, it came in third, accompanied by its rival Germany, host of the 2024 European Cup, Hungary and Bosnia.
- Result of the lottery -
* level one *
Group A: Croatia, Portugal, Poland and Scotland
The second group: Italy, Belgium, France and Israel
Group Three: Netherlands, Hungary, Germany and Bosnia
Group Four: Spain, Denmark, Switzerland and Serbia.
* Second Level *
Group A: Czechia, Ukraine, Albania and Georgia
Group Two: England, Finland, Ireland and Greece
Group Three: Austria, Norway, Slovenia, and Kazakhstan
Group D: Wales, Iceland, Montenegro and Turkey
* The third level *
Group A: Sweden, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and Estonia
Group Two: Romania, Kosovo, Cyprus, and Lithuania/Gibraltar
Group Three: Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland and Belarus
Group 4: Armenia, Faroe Islands, North Macedonia and Latvia
* fourth level *
Group A: Lithuania/Gibraltar, San Marino and Liechtenstein
Group Two: Moldova, Malta and Andorra
-Appointments-
The first and second rounds will take place between September 5 and 10, 2024.
The third and fourth rounds will take place between October 10 and 15, 2024.
The fifth and sixth rounds will take place between November 14 and 19, 2024.
Up and down supplement between March 20 and 25, 2025.
First level quarter-finals between 20 and 25 March 2025.
The last four of the first level league between June 4 and 8, 2025.
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