Starting from the 2024-’25 season, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) announced its new changes in the Champions League game formats. Not only was there an increase of teams in the modified format, but the system of advancing to the next stage also changed from preceding seasons. According to the UEFA, the incentive behind the alteration was to “strengthen the synergy between the league and knockout phases, and to provide more sporting incentive during the league phase.”
In previous years, the Champions League had consisted of 32 teams, with four teams in each of their eight respective groups ranging from Groups A-H. Each team in their group had played against each other twice, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the round of 16.
However, with the recent update to 36 teams, qualifying for the round of 16 is more complicated—the top eight teams automatically advance to the round of 16, whereas the teams ranked ninth to no. 24 have to compete in a two-legged knockout playoff to secure their places with the other top eight teams. The remaining teams that rank no. 25 and under are eliminated.
“It might be a bit more exciting and the schedule and league format is pretty interesting for us fans,” Minsung Choi (10), an enthusiastic soccer fan, said. “But from the player’s perspective, I believe that it might be more tiring. Players have to play more away games and more matches in general due to the new format, making it more exciting for fans but more exhausting for players.”
Some showed negative views regarding the new format of the tournament and found no significant purpose in the change.
“I am a bit old-fashioned, so I think I prefer the original form,” Robin Ibbotson, varsity soccer coach, said. “I think adding more teams is so that the UEFA could make more money. I do not think it necessarily adds to the quality of the tournament. However, I am more open to see if the [new format] is better.”
Nonetheless, smaller teams gained upsides in the modified format since all teams, including top-level teams, face each other early on.
“There may be [relatively] bigger match-ups earlier on in the tournament compared to the previous seasons, which may cause more upsets,” Mr. Ibbotson said. “The top seeding teams will be facing each other in this format, whereas old groups usually had roughly only one top-level team and a few mid-level teams in one group of four. Now there is an opportunity for big teams to play each other earlier, meaning there will be a few upsets as smaller teams are playing higher up in the new league setup. So yes, smaller teams may end up going further than you expect, which is a good thing.”
Others refuted the idea that increasing the number of teams competing against each other from the beginning provided more possibilities for upsets and rather believed it posed a bigger challenge for smaller teams.
“I think the new format with an increased number of competing teams and games makes it harder for smaller teams to compete,” Joonmo Ahn (11), varsity soccer player, said. “By increasing the number of games, smaller clubs have a further disadvantage in progressing to the next rounds. In the previous system, one or two miraculous wins were enough to move on to the next stage. However, now that threshold has increased significantly, making it harder for the smaller clubs to rely on underdog wins.”
Although the modifications in the Champions League format have garnered a mix of positive and negative reviews from fans, the major issue of condition management of the players needs to be addressed simultaneously in evaluating the new system’s effectiveness.