More games, more money

The 2024/2025 season of the UEFA Champions League will be the start of of a complete new format. No more poule system, but one big league of 36 teams. They all will play 8 games, in a system in which every team should get a comparable “heaviness” in the schedule. Whatever that may mean. In my opinion this system can never be fair. It all depends who you play away, and who at home. Luck at the draw will be an enormous factor.

The first eight go through to the 1/8 finals, number 9 until 24 play play-offs to reach that same stage.

In total this will create 100 more games than the previous format. Which will bring in a lot more money, which will again go to the usual suspects like Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Liverpool, etc… The smaller clubs will get the crumbs again.

Four more teams

Four more teams will reach the official stage, 2 of those spots will once again go to the top leagues. The 2 best performing leagues will get an extra spot the next year. In most cases that is Germany, Italy, Spain or England.

Instead of making the competition broader with the Champions of the countries from spot 11 to 20 of the coefficients list, they once again chose for more teams from the same leagues. Which will make the gap between the big leagues and clubs and the smaller leagues bigger and bigger.

Once again more of the same. This will in the long run make the games less and less interesting. People love underdogs and especially underdogs winning games against bigger teams.

A sad evolution, but money talks, especially in football these days…

Sincerely,

Pele23