By David Butler
Most likely in light of the botched Super League breakaway, UEFA are shaking up the format of European competitions from the 2024/25 season. There will now be single league made up of 36 competing clubs.
Teams will no longer play three opponents in reverse fixtures. Instead they will now face fixtures against 10 different teams, half at home and half away. Under the new format, teams will play four matches more than the present structure.
There will be extra places with a failsafe to keep the big clubs sweet in case they have an underwhelming domestic season – 2 extra slots are available to the two clubs with the highest club coefficients that have not qualified automatically for the Champions League’s league stage, but have qualified either for the Champions League qualification phase or the Europa League/the Europa Conference League.
From a commercial perspective this reorganization means a greater inventory of fixtures to offer broadcasters. UEFA are also claiming that “the new format should mean that there is more to play for right up until the final night of league action”.
From a player welfare/managerial perspective, the extra matches will likely not be welcomed. Take a player contracted to a Premier League team, or another club in a twenty-team domestic league. The season will be now a minimum of 4,320 minutes assuming a player does not reach the later stages of the UEFA competition. Also, that figure is outside domestic cup competitions. Given that the clubs in these elite competitions tend to have cup runs domestically, the potential minutes to play will probably be closer to ~5,000. Already big clubs have sizable rosters and rotate a lot - I can see a day where big clubs will almost have two versions of themselves, one competing domestically and another in European competitions.
Most likely in light of the botched Super League breakaway, UEFA are shaking up the format of European competitions from the 2024/25 season. There will now be single league made up of 36 competing clubs.
Teams will no longer play three opponents in reverse fixtures. Instead they will now face fixtures against 10 different teams, half at home and half away. Under the new format, teams will play four matches more than the present structure.
There will be extra places with a failsafe to keep the big clubs sweet in case they have an underwhelming domestic season – 2 extra slots are available to the two clubs with the highest club coefficients that have not qualified automatically for the Champions League’s league stage, but have qualified either for the Champions League qualification phase or the Europa League/the Europa Conference League.
From a commercial perspective this reorganization means a greater inventory of fixtures to offer broadcasters. UEFA are also claiming that “the new format should mean that there is more to play for right up until the final night of league action”.
From a player welfare/managerial perspective, the extra matches will likely not be welcomed. Take a player contracted to a Premier League team, or another club in a twenty-team domestic league. The season will be now a minimum of 4,320 minutes assuming a player does not reach the later stages of the UEFA competition. Also, that figure is outside domestic cup competitions. Given that the clubs in these elite competitions tend to have cup runs domestically, the potential minutes to play will probably be closer to ~5,000. Already big clubs have sizable rosters and rotate a lot - I can see a day where big clubs will almost have two versions of themselves, one competing domestically and another in European competitions.
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