Alright, the main tournament (group stage + knockout rounds) is perfect in my opinion. However, I believe the qualification process needs a re-do. First, I do not believe that the leagues ranked 10-15 deserve two berths in the tournament. These runners-ups are not from major leagues (aka add quality) or champions in their own right. With that said, I also feel that four qualifying rounds is one two many. Here is my proposal (league rank in parenthesis): Playoff Round (20 clubs): 4th (1-3) 3rd (4-5) 15 winners from Second Qualifying Round 2nd Qualifying Round (30 clubs): 3rd (6) 2nd (7-9) Champions (13-22) 16 winners from First Qualifying Round 1st Qualifying Round (32 clubs): Champions (23-55, excluding Liechtenstein) In addition, I realize that the CL group stage 3rd-place teams dropping down to the Europa League knockout rounds adds interest to the CL group stage, but that additional interest is minimal. Therefore, I would propose that there would be no CL group stage drop downs, and as a result, the Europa League group stage would be expanded to 64 clubs, so that a natural 32-team knockout phase would occur. This would allow most of the major nations to have all of their representatives avoid qualification, qualifications to be played over three rounds instead of four, and leagues ranked 10-15 to get a fourth berth (in exchange for losing a CL spot). What do you think?
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/access2016.html has the Access List with Kosovo excluded. It has 41 champions competing for 5 spots in the Group Stage from the Champions Path. 8 of them start in Qualifying Round 1, 30 start in Qualifying Round 2, and 3 start in Qualifying Round 3. What I think UEFA should do is move some champions from Qualifying Round 2 to Qualifying Round 1 and other champions from Qualifying Round 2 to Qualifying Round 3. There is a big difference in quality between the top leagues whose champions start in Qualifying Round 2 (including sometimes participants Red Bull Salzburg, BATE Borisov, Dinamo Zagreb, Celtic, Copenhagen, and APOEL Nicosia) and the bottom leagues whose champions start in Qualifying Round 2. Given that I had to get 41 champions down to 20 clubs in Qualifying Rounds 1 and 2 combined (with some clubs allowed to skip one or both of those rounds), I would so something like this: 16 champions start in Qualifying Round 1 (8 more than currently) 18 champions start in Qualifying Round 2 (12 fewer than currently) 7 champions start in Qualifying Round 3 (4 more than currently) Currently the champion of the 12th best league (for 2010-2011 through 2014-2015 since that's what determines 2016-2017 allocations), Turkey starts in the Group Stage, and the champion of the 16th best league, Austria, starts three rounds earlier. The 12th best league and the 16th best league should not have their champions treated so far apart.
While I have thought of something similar and do somewhat agree, I think the runners-up of leagues ranked 10-15 don't meet either of two important criteria: being a champion or being from a major nation (aka competitive) and so shouldn't be in the field. At that point, there would be only 9 non-champions in qualifying so I don't see why UEFA would necessarily need a Champions/League-Route split. Btw, I am assuming Kosovo will be eligible by 2018.
http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/a-48-team-uefa-champions-league-and-its-implications.2022219/ http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/a-40-team-uefa-champions-league.2029295/ http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/trying-a-48-team-champions-league.2032138/ From this thread.
Simple - stop giving big countries so many slots and ditching 3rd place goes into the Europa League would be a massive improvement for me. England / Spain / Germany having 33% of representatives of the teams each year? Absolute disgrace. I've vented about this on another post but this should be dropped to three absolute max for the top 3 for coefficient and as for other nations like Portugal / Italy having 3, no no no no no. I miss the days of AEK Athens / Ajax / Feyenoord / AIK / Rosenborg / S Bucharest / Red Star Belgrade, need I go on? Big clubs want a superleague and Uefa doesn't give a flying toss about various leagues. Before you ask, I'm 30 but do remember Ajax 95 bossing Europe. Now they are a 5-0 home win for Real. Sorry state of affairs footy, all £££££ dominated.
What makes you think that adding more teams from small countries to the Champions League would make the smaller teams any more competitive? The Champions League is a tiny fraction of the revenue the big clubs generate. All taking berths away from the top leagues would do is make the group stage even more dull by getting rid of competitive teams for someone who will lose 7-0 to Real instead of 5-0.
Also 30 yrs. old and remember that great Ajax team with kluivert, reizeger, litmanen, blind, etc. Another that comes to mind is the Dynamo Kiev side of the later 90s lead by shevchenko and rebrov. One of the best parts of the champions league was seeing those unknowns on the big stage for the first time. Now with the huge spending power of the big clubs to scoop up all the top young players and the non-stop, global coverage of the game, a lot of that has been lost.
I've rethought this, and I agree that the runners-up from leagues 10-15 shouldn't be in the competition. However, I think that there should still be a Champions path. Here's the plan: the champ of the 13th best league and the 4th place team from the top league will go straight to the GS. That means 24 clubs auto qualify. The EL winners if necessary will play in the Champions path. The league path will only have one round, and four clubs will advance from eight (team from leagues ranked 2-9. The Champions path will have four rounds, and four clubs will qualify.
I don't want more clubs to start in the Group Stage. Some clubs from the Champions Path have done better than expected in the Group Stage. Here are some clubs' coefficients going into 2011-2012 and going into 2016-2017: APOEL Nicosia: 13.124 to 35.935 BATE Borisov: 23.216 to 34.000 Basel (started in the Group Stage sometimes): 39.980 to 87.755 Astana and Malmo FF had none of their own coefficient points going into 2011-2012 and both of them reached the Group Stage in 2015-2016. I don't want it to be harder for those clubs to reach the Group Stage.
Rumblings about a significant change to the CL format: http://www.espnfc.us/uefa-champions...ampions-league-format-change-proposed-reports Many different proposals on the table still but they seem to be gravitating towards having knockout rounds until there are 16 teams and then have the group stage (either 2 groups of 8 or 4 groups of 4). Two groups of 8 would seem to lead to a whole bunch of dead-rubber matchups. But I do like having the longer, group-stage round being later in the competition when there is less cannon-fodder among the field. It would also strengthen and legitimize the Europa League since the relegated teams from the CL would enter early in that competition and not half-way through like is currently the case.
That's old. Rumblings came out yesterday about a 32-team tournament (like current) but where top four leagues get four berths, one of which is based on "historical achievement."
Having two groups of 8 teams would be terrible, as very few countries would qualify. It should be 6 groups of 6 teams. The top 12 teams advance to the tier 1 playoffs and the next 12 teams advance to thier 2 playoffs.
How do you propose playoffs with 12 clubs be structured? I think it would be too many competitions if there were Tier 1 Playoffs, Tier 2 Playoffs, and the Europa League. Would clubs who knew they had no chance at finishing in the Top 2 in their group care about finishing third or fourth to reach the Tier 2 Playoffs, or would they focus on their domestic league to qualify for the next Champions League?
The ranking of the group winners will be affected by unequal group difficulty. In 2014-2015 one group had Bayern Munich and Manchester City, one group had Atletico Madrid and Juventus, and one group had Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain. Furthermore, half the games are on Tuesdays and half the games are on Wednesdays. A club that plays its last Group Stage game on Wednesday could have an advantage of knowing what result (and what goal differential if it could come down to tiebreakers) it needs in order to be one of the best four group winners.
Then why not just make it 4 groups of six? Group-winners advance automatically to QFs. 2nd and 3rd place teams go to a two-legged playoff with the winners of those playoffs advancing to the QFs. This would address @EvanJ 's legitimate concern over 'dead-rubber' matches towards the end of the group-stage (there might be a couple such matches, but that's always unavoidable). It would also give a significant incentive to win your group since it leads to a bye to the QFs. 4 groups of six would also make for several head-to-head clashes of big clubs during the group stage rather than having fans wait until April for the big clubs to finally encounter each other in a meaningful match.
I'd still rather the current format than 4 groups of 6. 4 groups of 6 requires 10 matchdays in the Group Stage, which is 4 more than with the current format, and since the Group Stage would have 8 fewer clubs there would need to be more clubs eliminated in the qualifying rounds. The clubs that start in Qualifying Round 2 with the current format and reach the Group Stage play 12 Champions League games in 22 midweeks with the current format, and I don't want that number to increase due to more Group Stage games.
Was trying to figure out how to deal with the guaranteed Top 4 spots for the top leagues without hurting teams that have a legitimate shot to make noise in the competition like Porto or Monaco. Think I came up with something that works very well although it probably has no shot of actually passing since too many of the smaller teams will have to play an extra qualifying round and they all have voting power. Think it's pretty smooth though. 1st Qualifying Round Champions from associations 22-54 (except Liechtenstein) 2nd Qualifying Round 16 winners from 1st qualifying round Champions from associations 16-21 Runners-up from assocations 12-15 (or 11-14 if Europa League winner already pre-qualified to group stage of CL) 3rd Qualifying Round 13 winners from 2nd qualifying round Champions from associations 12-15 (or 11-15 if Europa League winner already pre-qualified to group stage of CL) Runners-up from associations 7-11 ( or 7-10 if Europa League winner already pre-qualified to group stage of CL) 3rd place from associations 5-6 Playoff Round 12 winners from 3rd qualifying round Group Stage Champions League winner (I'm assuming either one of the Champions League winner or the Europa League winner will always pre-qualify, sure contingency plans could be made) Europa League winner Champions from associations 1-11 (or 1-12 if Europa League winner already pre-qualified to group stage of CL) Runners-up from associations 1-6 3rd place from assocations 1-4 4th place from associations 1-4 6 winners from playoff round Yes, my proposal does make a lot of teams play an extra round, but for any team who belonged anywhere near the actual group stage, that first game will just be a cakewalk anyway. Pedigreed teams that have actually been competitive in Europe aren't punished at all under the new system, and without taking away opportunities from anyone, we end up with much higher caliber sides in the actual group stage making for more competitive groups and more exciting matches. Seems like a win/win. You could always just give more money to the confederations who go out in the early stages to make up for any losses they might incur by having a more difficult time going deep in the competition. Thoughts?
If you look at the EL though it already has a much larger set of qualifying rounds than CL plus 2 extra matchdays in the tournament proper. UEFA needs to decide if they want to make CL purely an elite competition or if it should be a tournament where the first half of the competition is spent watching minnows getting pounded on by Europe's elite. If they don't, the big clubs will eventually decide for them. True though, 14 CL games in 22 midweeks is a bit brutal. Although in practice there would be very few teams dealing with that schedule. Maybe one per year, I imagine.
I would love grops of six. To prevent decreasing the number of teams, it should be six groups for a total 36 teams. But then it would be 12 teams in the playoffs, so it would require the 4+8 rule again. I'm fine with it. I don't like that the league allocations depend only on artificial coefficients. That's why I propose to have the top 8 teamsof the previous edition to qualify directly.
The Europa League has more clubs in the Qualifying Rounds, but not any more qualifying matchdays than the Champions League. The two extra Europa League Knockout Round matchdays are when some of the Champions League clubs play their Round of 16. How many Champions League Group Stage games have minnows? In 2015-2016, there were some blowouts, but the 48 games in Groups B, C, D, and H had only 2 games decided by more than 2 goals. Counting the 17 draws as having a margin of victory as 0, the 96 Group Stage games had an average margin of victory of 1.66. To compare, the 380 Premier League games in 2015-2016 had an average margin of victory of 1.29.