The UEFA Champions league 2024/25 is set to start off with a critical upgrade in its configuration, following the draw that occurred on Thursday in Monaco.
The patched up structure presents an extended contest including more groups, another association design, and extra knockout rounds.
More Teams, No More Groups: The refreshed Champions league configuration will see 36 clubs contend in the competition, an increment from the past 32. This extension considers extra portrayal from Europe’s top associations. France’s Ligue 1 presently gets three programmed capability spots, while Germany and Italy, as the associations with the most elevated UEFA coefficients from the past season, likewise gain additional billets. One more space is designated to a public boss rising up out of the passing rounds.
The most extreme change accompanies the disintegration of the conventional group stage. All things considered, the 36 groups will be put into one huge association, taking on the ‘Swiss system’ regularly utilized in chess. This organization permits each group to play eight matches against various adversaries, supplanting the old group stage’s six matches.
Significantly More Games: Under the new configuration, each group will play eight games in the association stage — two a larger number of than in the past gathering stage design. The 36 groups will be separated into four cultivated pots, and each group will confront two rivals from each pot, with one match at home and one away. Eminently, no club will confront one more group from its own homegrown association, and a club can confront a limit of two groups from any single country. This extension implies that the association stage will presently reach out into January, with the complete number of matches expanding from 96 to 144.
Additional Knockout Round: The new organization likewise presents a play-off round. After the association stage, the best eight groups will naturally advance to the last 16. The groups completing ninth to 24th will enter a two-legged knockout bind to seek the excess spots in the last 16. These ties will be cultivated, in view of the groups’ situations in the association stage.
The last 12 groups in the association stage will be disposed of, with no admittance to the UEFA Europa League, denoting a takeoff from past releases where groups could drop down to the second-level contest.
The progressions have been presented as a component of UEFA’s endeavors to increment seriousness and convey all the more high-stakes matches from the get-go in the competition.