Champions League reform is upon us. When the 2024-25 season begins, the competition will
enter into a new broadcasting contract, with a raft of different commercial agreements.
And, when it does, it will be under a new format
with many more games – the Swiss Model, as it’s been referred to.
But how will it work?
What will the Champions League actually look like and why is this happening?
First, the most dramatic change: the 32-team group stage will be abolished and replaced by a single
36-team league. Each participating club will play ten games - five at home, five away - with those
fixtures determined by a seeding system which will rank clubs based on historic performance.
After those initial ten games have been completed, the teams finishing in the top eight of the league
will advance automatically to the next round. The next 16 sides, however, would then enter
a playoff, from which eight winners would emerge to create a 16-team knockout stage
Juventus’ Andrea Agnelli is the Chairman of the European Club Association
and he has described the changes as his “ideal Champions League” and believes it
will “provide great opportunities for those teams participating in that competition.”
As well he might. In essence, the Swiss model is a clever way to stage a competition with a
large number of participants without sending half of them home after the first round.
Previously, under the old system, 16 of the 32 clubs were eliminated after just
six games. Under its proposed replacement, each participant would be guaranteed four more games.
It will also mean that Europe’s elite clubs get to play each other more often. And, from a commercial
standpoint, the greater regularity of those top-tier clashes has an obvious attraction.
More games mean more ticket sales, a bigger television audience for each club’s sponsors
and – most likely – more opportunity to earn prize money.
But another attraction is the lack of jeopardy and the diminished risk
created by a new qualifying facility. The number of participants will rise from 32 to 36,
but instead of filling those four new slots with deserving teams from the next best domestic
leagues on UEFA’s “country coefficients” list, the current plan is to award an extra qualifying
slot to Ligue 1, putting them on an equal footing with England, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The second spot would then be reserved for a team that had performed well in a recent
Champions League, but who would ordinarily be asked to progress through the qualifying rounds.
With the Eredivisie currently offering no guaranteed route to the Champions
League Group Stage, this is a situation which has befallen Ajax in the past.
Despite reaching the semi-finals in 2019, for instance, they still had to pass through two
qualifying rounds to reach the next season’s group stage proper. Under this new system,
they would have been an obvious candidate – and likely recipient – of that automatic spot.
The two remaining extra places will be more controversial,
as they’re intended to provide safety nets for underperforming clubs.
They would be reserved for the teams with the best club coefficient, a ranking based on performances
in Europe over the previous five seasons, that had failed to qualify from the previous season’s
domestic campaign but who had still finished within the other European places (5th to 7th).
Think Manchester United two seasons ago, for instance, or Tottenham more recently.
Theoretically, that means that the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A,
La Liga or Ligue 1 could have up to six participants in the Champions League,
if two seasoned Euro campaigners finished between fifth and seventh.
That will come with a caveat, though.
All of those leagues are limited to having seven European slots in total each season.
Typically, that would be four teams in the Champions League,
two in the Europa League and one in the soon-to-arrive Europa Conference League.
However, if a team was to require one of those lucky loser spots, then the domestic league
in question would not be able to send a full quota to the second or third-tier competitions.
Even so, there will still be third-placed teams from Russia or the Netherlands,
or a runner-up in Switzerland or Greece, wondering why they have not made Europe’s
top competition, while a seventh-placed team in England or Italy potentially has.
The European leagues collectively will also worry that Swiss model competitions
are inherently scalable. What is to stop the European Club Association,
asking for 18 games in 2027, or 34 in 2030? And, with football’s calendar already full to bursting,
where would the space to accommodate that expansion come from?