The Champions League proper returns next month and this season it will have a brand new format.
The ‘Swiss Model’ makes its debut and, as a result, the Champions League draw tomorrow (Thursday) is going to look rather different to the eight-groups-of-four setup we’ve all become used to in recent years.
So let The Athletic take you through everything you need to know about the draw and the new look for UEFA’s flagship club competition.
First, a quick recap. What is the Swiss Model and why are there so many teams now?
The new format has a ‘league phase’ rather than a ‘group phase’. It ditches eight groups of four and crams all the competing clubs together in one massive table. The format is based on the Swiss system used in chess, and does not require every team to play all of the others.
The number of teams participating increases by four, to 36, with each participant now playing eight matches in the first phase, instead of six in previous iterations. But instead of just three different opponents twice, home and away, teams will face a different team in every game.
In total, there will be 189 matches in the competition proper, capped by the final in Munich on May 31, up from the previous 125.
UEFA hopes the new format will lead to more competitive fixtures from the off, with bigger games earlier in the tournament because teams from pot one (aka, the big names) will play each other earlier rather than largely being kept apart until the knockout phase in February and March, as happened with the previous format. It will also give teams in pot four more of an opportunity to pick up points, because they will be playing two other sides from that pot among their eight matches.
Once the league phase has been completed, which will now take until late January, the top eight sides in the table will qualify directly for a 16-team knockout round, with the other eight places decided by a newly introduced set of two-leg play-offs contested by the teams who finish between ninth and 24th in the league.
The round of 16 and beyond will now be seeded, so the teams who finish first and second in the league phase cannot face each other until the final.
This season’s lineup will be completed tonight, with four clubs winning their places via the last of seven pre-tournament play-offs.
So how does this change the draw format?
Unlike previous years, where teams were drawn into eight groups from four pots, there will be four pots of nine this year, and they will all be seeded by coefficient. A club’s UEFA coefficient is a score based on the results of teams competing in the five previous seasons of the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League.
There’s one exception to that: the only club who won’t be seeded by coefficient are the Champions League title holders, in this case Real Madrid. They will be the first side drawn.
(Top photo: Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images)
