© „Reuters“
Today, the UEFA Executive Committee approved new club tournament formats that will take effect from the 2024/25 season. The reforms came after extensive consultations within the football community and were unanimously supported last Friday by the ECA Board and the UEFA Club Competitions Committee (composed of representatives of the majority of clubs). Commenting on the new format, UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin said: "This new format supports the status and future of the game both in domestic leagues and across Europe. It maintains the principle that performance in your country will be the key to qualification, once again confirming the principles of solidarity and open competition. The changed format will still allow any European team to dream of participating in the UEFA Champions League, based on results achieved, thus ensuring long-term viability, prosperity, and growth for all European football clubs, not just a small circle of agreed teams. Football is a social and cultural treasure, enriched with values, traditions, and emotions shared across the continent. As the governing body of European football and the responsible supervisor, UEFA's role is to safeguard this legacy while promoting positive football development in Europe, in leagues, clubs, players, and fans at all levels. That's why over the past two years, we have carried out an extensive consultation process, which led to unanimous support for our proposal, and we are confident that these reforms will achieve the goals mentioned earlier." Other decisions related to the entry list, match dates, final format, coefficients, and financial distribution will be made by the end of the year. At the same time, UEFA will also confirm its strong financial commitment to European football as a whole and undertake measures to ensure greater financial solidarity to a wider range of clubs that do not participate in UEFA club competitions. This will strengthen a solid foundation on which the game is built across Europe. UEFA will also engage in dialogue with all interested parties to propose player health protection measures in all tournaments. The future format of the Champions League tournament will be as follows: - 36 teams will enter the main tournament instead of 32 clubs; - groups will be eliminated, and each club in the league will be guaranteed at least 10 matches against 10 different opponents (5 home matches, 5 away matches); - the top eight league teams will automatically advance to the knockout round, while teams finishing 9th-24th will compete in a two-match series for the remaining places in the quarter-final stage matches. Similar format changes will apply to the UEFA Europa League (8 guaranteed matches in the league stage) and the UEFA Europa Conference League (6 matches in the league stage). Following further discussions and agreements, these two tournaments may also be expanded to 36 teams in the main stage. The qualification for the UEFA Champions League will continue to be open and earned through a team's performance in their country's championships.
