UEFA Change Champions League Format

[HajdukSplit]

Today UEFA announced a change to the Champions League format starting in the 2018-2019 season, the big news is the top four leagues in the UEFA coefficient (currently Spain, Germany, England and Italy) will each have four clubs qualify automatically and none of them go through qualifying. The leagues ranked 5th-6th (France and Russia) will have two sides automatically qualify and the 7th-10th (currently Portugal, Ukraine, Belgium, Turkey) will have their champions qualify. All leagues below 10th place will have to go through qualifiers so the big losers are leagues like Switzerland, Greece and Netherlands who lose their automatic spot. The "good" news for the teams ranked 10th-18th is each will provide two teams in the qualifying, however, qualifying will be much harder now with fewer spots open

Also the club coefficient will change slightly; clubs with previous years CL success will be weighted more, UEFA haven't really gone into detail yet about this but I assume that teams who tend to do well in the EL and not the CL (a la Porto lets say) won't have as high as a coefficient in the CL draws

http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/newsid=2398899.html

The big winners are obviously Italy, but they have the second highest TV contract in Europe for CL rights so no surprise The big lowers are basically any league outside the top 10. Platini's vision of the likes of Ludogorets, Dinamo, Legia, APOEL making it now are severely diminished, maybe some fans will like that but its becoming less of a "champions" league

More details will come in December, including a more precise decision on coefficients, prize money and what happens to the Europa League which also might be reformed

Click to read more...

 

[Deficient Mode]

Well it probably improves the quality of the competition. I'm sure it's great for fans of those non-top 10 league clubs to have the biggest clubs in the world visit for a meaningful match, but as an outsider, more matches between top league teams appeals to me more. I like that those leagues would have an additional team in the qualifying as well. One of the problems with the coefficient system is that it's harder for one league to catch the next with fewer teams to collect points for the coefficient.

It hasn't been a "champions" league for a long time, either.

 

[Live in the Now]

It's either this or a super league at this point.

 

[Ceremony]

Appalling. At least it expedites the Big Clubs ****ing off and permanently touring the world instead of perpetuating this scam for money. Then the fun will begin, as something approaching worth and competition returns to domestic European football and we get a nice laugh when the Big Clubs die from playing all their games in southeast Asia and try to come scrambling back, only to realise nobody wants them.

An absolute sham of a competition made worse by the few dictating that money compensates for quality. We're ***** and poorly run so you'd better make sure we get the money we would get if we deserved it automatically. Imagine capitulating to that line of thinking. Horrible.

 

[Evilo]

Absolutely awful. Platini tried to change it for the (slightly) better but now that he's gone, big clubs have won the battle.
More money to big teams who are already the richest, the top 4 leagues will count for HALF the teams in the CL. That's completely crazy.

As I've said for a while now, they should toss the CL all together and build a european league with relegation to country leagues. The best european team would win the league rather than hope for the easiest draw in CL history (see Real last year).
At least it would make sense.

 

[Shrimper]

It's a load of horse **** to help the rich get richer

 

[Panteras]

Absolutely awful. Platini tried to change it for the (slightly) better but now that he's gone, big clubs have won the battle.
More money to big teams who are already the richest, the top 4 leagues will count for HALF the teams in the CL. That's completely crazy.

As I've said for a while now, they should toss the CL all together and build a european league with relegation to country leagues. The best european team would win the league rather than hope for the easiest draw in CL history (see Real last year).
At least it would make sense.

so you are saying a European wide league with the participants only playing in that league? and those relegated will be sent to their domestic league?

 

[Evilo]

so you are saying a European wide league with the participants only playing in that league? and those relegated will be sent to their domestic league?

Yes at this point it's ridiculous.
So I'd rather see a true european league and the three relegated team would go back to their domestic league.
Winners of domestic leagues would play a tournament to decide who would replace those relegated teams.

At this point, it's much better than the current format where the best 8 teams are ensured to play the biggest number of games. 20 would be better.

 

[Panteras]

but the league would be composed of the champions of each UEFA member? The competition would drop significantly.

 

[Live in the Now]

Premier League clubs would never join a super league. At this point they make more money from the PL TV rights than the CL TV rights.

England also pays the most for CL TV rights and Italy pays second. That's the reason for these changes, to make sure their spots are stable.

Things will never progress to the point of a super league.

 

[Evilo]

but the league would be composed of the champions of each UEFA member? The competition would drop significantly.

No, the 20 best teams in Europe regardless of countries.
There's really no need to be sitting on both chairs. Yes we'd like small countries included, but no we'd like the best and richest teams, blah, blah, blah.

Since they apparently won't go back to the previous and better format, they should toss the whole concept at once and go for a full euro league.

Right now, the top 4 league will have half the spots in the CL, even though Italy usually can't compete for the whole thing for instance. This way they'll get better coefficients and are pretty much certain to always remain the top 4. It's completely crazy. They'll get more money from more games and better coefficients since they'll have more teams.

Disgusting all around.

 

[Evilo]

Premier League clubs would never join a super league. At this point they make more money from the PL TV rights than the CL TV rights.

England also pays the most for CL TV rights and Italy pays second. That's the reason for these changes, to make sure their spots are stable.

Things will never progress to the point of a super league.

If the top 5-6 EPL teams go to the Euro league, you can bet money will be there and not in the EPL.
If you get a league with :
Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, City, United, PSG, Lyon, Monaco, Real, Atletico, Barca, Sevilla, Valencia, Porto, Benfica, Bayern, Dortmund, Schalke, Leverkusen, Juventus, Roma and Napoli (that's 22 teams, so you can substract the 2 you find the weakes), I can tell you the TV rights will be there, and will be HUGE. Every week, these teams would meet.
Who would care to see West Ham and Liverpool fight for the right to play the Euro promotion playoffs?

 

[Live in the Now]

Those wouldn't be the teams that joined if it was about TV rights money. Not even close. Therein would lie the problem. There would be way too much politics.

Both Milans, Marseille, and Liverpool would be in. At minimum. Ajax as well I would assume regardless of sporting merit. And some of these teams would have to be given permanent spots.

 

[Evilo]

Those wouldn't be the teams that joined if it was about TV rights money. Not even close. Therein would lie the problem. There would be way too much politics.

Of course they would.
Those teams have been asking for a super league for a long time. They'd get the biggest TV right of alltime. Easily would surpass the EPL rights.
Imagine if your team was to play Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG, City or Juventus pretty much every week?

 

[Live in the Now]

Of course they would.
Those teams have been asking for a super league for a long time. They'd get the biggest TV right of alltime. Easily would surpass the EPL rights.
Imagine if your team was to play Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG, City or Juventus pretty much every week?

Teams at the top of the table make £150m in just TV in England.

Now, how likely is it they get more than that? Especially considering many countries will be completely frozen out of the super league. Fans are already driven up the wall by ticket prices, now you ask away fans to travel to Italy and France and England every other week? No way.

Then in addition, why would they allow teams like Leverkusen and Napoli any opportunity to gain more global popularity than them by getting a place in their showpiece? They wouldn't. It is all about greed after all. The really big teams will not want to share money with these teams and any such super league would be two tiered. The teams that get the most attention (all PL, Barcelona, and Madrid) would make the most money no matter how good they are. Major problem with that.

 

[Evilo]

But when english media will broadcast United-Barca or City-Real every week, you can be sure it'll be expensive. And of course seats will be more expensive just like they are for huge games. No worries, they'll sell.

Travelling won't be a problem really. It's still less traveling than in the US for the NHL.

 

[Evilo]

19 travels abroad, pretty much all in western Europe.

 

[Live in the Now]

The only way a super league will work for English teams is if there are 18-19 games in the calendar with no home and away taking the place of Champions League games, they get to keep their TV money in England by staying in the EPL, and they get to have four of the teams in it. There is too much risk otherwise and given most of the owners are money managers, they're not going to mess with that.

Otherwise their fans won't follow. The fans don't have anymore interest in super league games between City and Juve for example than they do regular league games. For what it's worth more people turned up to watch City-Bournemouth than City-Juve. On top of that as you can see on this board people would rather watch Stoke play than PSG.

 

[Evilo]

Of course they would because the better players would go to these teams even more. We'd hear about it all the time, the ads would be about that competition and not the others.
Mentalities change.

 

[gary69]

Like LITN implied, Milan as a city would certainly have a team in an European Super league over Napoli, probably both clubs would be there. Bigger city in commercial terms, better travel etc.

Italy is a bigger economy than Spain, of course Barca and Real would participate, but beyond that it's hard to say which other teams would be there for sure.

Portugal is an afterthought in financial terms, no way they get two teams when bigger football markets in Netherlands and Belgium get none.


What would happen with Russia is interesting, they could invest enough (oil) money into the competion to get a place even if travel would be far from ideal.

This list is incomplete, but gives some indication nevertheless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)

Superleague is a moot point now after this agreement though, at least for a decade.

 

[HajdukSplit]

The election to appoint the new UEFA president is next Wednesday between Netherland's Michael van Praag (former Ajax chairman and current president of Dutch FA) and Slovenia's Aleksander Ceferin. Ceferin seems to be the favorite garnering support from big countries like Germany and France along with pretty much all of eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The only prominent FA to back van Praag so far is England.

I only mention this because Ceferin is against the new change of Champions League format but it doesn't seem he can do anything about it. Though that's not stopping pretty much every 'smaller' federation from backing him because he has spoken against it

 

[Vasilevskiy]

Of course they would.
Those teams have been asking for a super league for a long time. They'd get the biggest TV right of alltime. Easily would surpass the EPL rights.
Imagine if your team was to play Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG, City or Juventus pretty much every week?

Yeah, the rights for that league would be easily bigger than the current EPL rights, at least in Spain some crazy amounts would be thrown.

 

[Fro]

Absolutely awful. Platini tried to change it for the (slightly) better but now that he's gone, big clubs have won the battle.
More money to big teams who are already the richest, the top 4 leagues will count for HALF the teams in the CL. That's completely crazy.

As I've said for a while now, they should toss the CL all together and build a european league with relegation to country leagues. The best european team would win the league rather than hope for the easiest draw in CL history (see Real last year).
At least it would make sense.

i was just thinking that reading up to your post...relegate the last place team from each country league and promote 1 up...would be fun to watch play out

 

[HajdukSplit]

Ceferin won the election easily, but says he cannot do anything about the CL format change until 2021 when the next cycle begins. He will fight to bring back the current format though not sure that's possible once this change has already been made

 

[Edo]

Is there any news on the Europa League format changing? I highly doubt anybody here would spend anytime watching Olympiakos or Fenerbache playing each other in the CL unless they follow those teams. The same teams usually qualify to the knockout stages and I could care less which Greek/Turkish/Dutch/etc team finish 3rd and 4th.

What UEFA need to do is change the Europa league. Stop placing 3rd place teams from the CL into the knockout stages of the EL. The Italian teams make a farce of the EL and it doesn't seem like the English teams give that much of a crap either. But the teams outside of the upper leagues still see it as something.

Even with the CL, I'm not really going to go out of my way to watch Arsenal play a Celtic or Viktoria Plzen. I highly doubt people who's big clubs play the smaller ones will either. We all wait for the big matches in the group stages or knockouts.

Introducing a European league and removing the top clubs from their domestic leagues would be terrible.