http://bleacherreport.com/articles/927901-uefa-champions-league-proposal-for-a-new-format i saw this yesterday and i thought it looked interesting, i also think it is possible that this could happen.
Why does the author expect Sturm Graz to beat BATE Borisov head-to-head in the hypothetical Round of 64 when the opposite happened in the Playoff Round? Based on how this season's Champions League has gone, I also disagree with the author's predictions for: Rangers-Lille (Round of 32) Basel-Dinamo Zagreb (Round of 32) The author predicted Chelsea to beat Inter in the Round of 32, Chelsea to win in the Round of 16, and then put Inter in the Quarterfinals instead of Chelsea. The author's plan disregards club coefficients for seeding purposes. Also does anybody know of a competition where in one round some teams are seeded, some teams are unseeded and play seeded teams, and some teams are neither seeded nor unseeded and play each other? That format would eliminate there being so many weeks of qualifying round games, but those weeks would still be necessary unless the Europa League changed also. The clubs that would play two games each in the Round of 64 and Round of 32 would only play two fewer games than clubs that start in the Group Stage and play six games there.
There is no seeding in the German cup. In the first two rounds non-league teams (clubs not from the 1st or 2nd Bundesliga) get a seperate pot and can't play each other (this is actually done for the benefit of the non-league clubs), but other than that the draw is completely random (although the first round draw is de facto somewhat like seeding because of this, as the non-league pot always contains half of the teams, so it's guaranteed that each match will feature a team from the non-league and league pot each - but in the second round you could have Bayern München play Borussia Dortmund or a 7th division side, completely depending on the luck of draw). From the 3rd round on there are no seperate pots at all.
The author could have saved me a lot of time by simply typing: "Let's switch to a KO system, with the Champions from the strongest leagues seeded" Hardly a groundbreaking idea. The argument simply seems to be that the group stage isn't any good. I disagree.
I don't get why he assumed that the 4th placed teams from the three strongest leagues should be among the weakest teams.
I don't think he assumes that. Though I will admit that I didn't read and honestly don't care about his fantasy bracket except as a diagram of what the tournament would look like structurally. I think he puts the 4th place teams in a worse position tournament because although they are probably among the best teams in the tournament on raw talent they are the teams furthest from actually being champions of their own leagues--this is the CHAMPIONS league after all.