UEFA will adopt revised plans to allow two clubs into the Champions League based on how their countries rank in European competition from 2024 onwards.
Changes to the Champions League starting in the 2024/25 campaign were first confirmed last May, with the group stage to be ditched in favour of a 36-club single league. The top eight clubs will automatically enter the last 16 and teams placed ninth to 24th go into a playoff round.
More recent plans had intended to reserve two extra places in the Champions League each season for the highest-ranking clubs that failed to otherwise qualify. It brought stinging criticism amid similarities to the European Super League’s idea of guaranteed entry for the wealthiest teams.
A new plan hasn’t scrapped that idea totally, but the two extra places for non-qualifiers will be determined by country coefficient rankings rather than individual clubs.
The coefficient rankings are determined by how all of a country’s clubs perform across all European competitions over the last five years.
Hypothetically, were those rules to be applied now, England and Netherlands would benefit. But should other nations rise to the top two places in the rankings, they would get the places instead.
The revision serves to somewhat better protect the sporting integrity of the competition by not acting as quite so much of an automatic safety net should a big club who has previously done well unexpectedly fail to qualify.
As well as adapting the qualification process, UEFA have also lowered the number of games that will be played in the new single-league format. It was previously confirmed that clubs would play ten matches in the first round – five at home and five away. That would have increased the overall number of games needed to win the Champions League from 13 to 17.
However, a compromise will see each team play eight first round games instead.
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Source: 90min
