By Staff Writer: Alan Darnold
The Champions League(UCL) is an annual football (soccer) competition organized by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations). It features the top football clubs from Europe competing in a tournament format. Teams qualify based on their performance in their respective national leagues. The UCL was created in 1955 as the European Cup. in 1991, one year before the competition was rebranded as the Uefa Champions League. Currently, the UCL format is this; 32 teams are drawn into eight groups of four, they then compete against the other teams in their group in six games, after this the two teams who finish top of their group advance to the knockout stages.
These teams are then drawn where the first place teams from each group play a team that finished second in a different group. After the first knockout stages, the teams are drawn at random to determine the quarterfinal bracket and from here the teams play their way to the final. Since the tournament was rebranded in 1992, it has become the most viewed club competition in the world. For years the UCL has been applauded by how perfect it is. There has been a new format introduced for the coming seasons post 2024. An article posted to UEFA.com addressing the new format says this. “36 clubs will participate in the Champions League league phase (former group stage), giving four more sides the opportunity to compete against the best clubs in Europe.
Those 36 clubs will participate in a single league competition in which all 36 competing clubs are ranked together. Under the new format, teams will play eight matches in the new league phase (former group stage). They will no longer play three opponents twice – home and away – but will instead face fixtures against eight different teams, playing half of those matches at home and half away.” The question becomes, if the current format is so good, then why change it at all? UEFA believes that this change in format will benefit fans and clubs alike. UEFA’s push for the new Champions League format comes from several strategic considerations. They have said firstly, it aims to enhance commercial revenue and global viewership by increasing the number of matches. More matches means higher broadcasting rights fees and increased sponsorship opportunities.
UEFA have said that under the new Champions League format, smaller clubs will get a larger share of the prize money than they were before the change in format. They also that one of the main goals of the new format is to eliminate “meaningless” group games by making every group stage game matter. After looking at all of these reasons, it made UEFA come to the decision that a new format would be better for the competition and the sport. Playing more games isn’t better for everyone. UEFA appears to be approaching the decision from a purely revenue-based view. Teams like Manchester City, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Bayern Munich have the best players in the world on their team. These players get called up to their national teams. There are a few international breaks during the club season, where for two weeks there are no club football games, just national team games.
After the club season ends, the National team starts up almost instantly for tournaments or qualifying. In the end, players can end up very overworked. For example; in the 2022 season, Pedri, a midfielder for Barcelona and Spain, played a total of 73 games. He is just one example of players who end up playing an insane amount of games in one season. With this new format for the UCL, there will just be additional games that the players are forced to play in and travel out of the country for. UEFA doesn’t seem to know or care about the added risks the added games cause to the players.
They only seem to care about how much more money they can make. Forcing players to play these extremely long seasons is seen as problematic as it puts player’s careers at a higher risk at a younger age. Manchester City coach, Pep Guardiola, who is known as one of the greatest coaches ever, said this when asked about the new champions league format. “There are more teams but I don’t know how many more games. 15 or 17 matches. Two or three more is like one month… We say quality and quantity. Exhausted? Go and play the Club World Cup in the States.
You finish the season two weeks later. And maybe we’ll have some international games! It’s the same argument… The managers who play in Europe say it. They made the competitions. Have they spoken to the players? Captains of big clubs? Managers of big clubs? I read the newspapers and say, ‘oh, there will be more games’. You ask me and I answer. Is my answer going to change anything? No.” Pep is just an example of players or coaches that have spoken out against the new format. The fact that Pep amongst others just shows, in my opinion, that the players are so concerned about this new format that the coaches are speaking out to try and protect these player’s careers.
The UCL is the competition I enjoy watching more than any sporting competition in the world besides the World Cup and the format that is intact currently fits the competition perfectly and so many iconic moments have been produced as a result of this format. UEFA wants to change it for revenue based reasons, but in turn risk player’s careers and as a result, possibly threaten the sport as a whole. If UEFA can’t realize this and either stop the change or find a way to still lessen the amount of games played in a season, then the game faces major changes. We as fans need to do our best to prevent our favorite competition from being changed for the worse.