Written by: Theodore, Reporter in ISFM
This year’s 70th champions league will have a special and new system since 21 years! Instead of the regular single-elimination tournament with the group stages and two legs, the setup works in a sort of league style. With a lot more games and more big clubs against each other, UEFA has made the game more intense and dramatic; changing how the champions league works. But is it truly a good idea?
The New Format
There will be a total of 36 teams playing in a league phase, from the 3 different UEFA competitions (The conference league, The europa league, and The super cup) who will play a total of 8 games, except for the conference league playing 6, half away and half at home playing 8 different opponents randomly chosen. Points are given to teams after drawing (1 pts) or winning a game (2 pts) and loses result in no points. The top 8 will automatically be in the round of 16 and the rest all the way down to the 24th must participate in a group stage to reach the knock-out stages. After the teams are chosen for the round of 16, they will all face-out in the regular 2-leg knockout tournament until the end.
Why Did UEFA Do This?
UEFA chose to change the format to make the competition more competitive as the teams will play more games, letting bigger clubs play more. The group stage was thought to be dull with clubs only playing 3 other opponents lacking drama. They included only a single big club in each group and/or occasionally, had two, a guaranteed win for them. But for some people, there are too many games making it hard to keep track of your favorite team and you have to watch a lot of other teams to see where in the league your team is; evidently with 189 games in total played after the tournament is over. There is also a lot of criticism about “They are killing the champions league” stating UEFA is corrupt and just wants more money, that it was already good enough that people loved it. I do agree with the fact that it is hard to follow games like for younger fans who will have a harder time understanding but even I, a fifth grader, can’t keep track. It does let you watch a game at almost any time but I do think that the new format is fine.
The league phase
Currently (2/2/25), Liverpool is at the top (21 pts), and Arsenal, Barcelona, Athletico, Leverkusen, Lille, Inter and Aston villa are in the 7 other spots left whilst Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City wasn’t doing great, and ended up getting disqualified against Real Madrid. Personally, I would have thought that Man City would be in the top 8 but really, you can’t blame everything on Pep Guardiola. They have been suffering a lot of injuries, especially defenders which might be why they lost so many s.games
Conclusion
The champions haven’t changed since 2 decades, seeing major modifications this year. A league phase was added for more drama and games with bigger clubs making the start more tense unlike the group stages. This has also brought a lot of criticism and complications but since this is the first year, things could go wrong. As the league phase starts to end Liverpool has shown that it is and most certainly is capable of winning this competition, but to figure it out, we’ll have to wait.
Written by: Theodore, Reporter in ISFM
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