UEFA recently announced a new format and several changes for the Champions League starting from the 2024-2025 season. 

These changes will include an increase in the number of participating teams, a new classification system and the elimination of groups, meaning more decisive games. 

In this article, we will explain in detail these changes and their implications for clubs, players and fans.

So if you want to prepare and understand how this new format will work, just stay with us.

The Champions League is the biggest club championship on planet Earth, and all football fans wait all year to watch it.

This is a consequence of the participation of all the big clubs in Europe such as Real Madrid, Liverpool, Bayern, Milan and many other giants of world football.

Furthermore, the whole atmosphere of competition and excitement of fans from different countries who are passionate about a single sport makes everything more magical.

For all these reasons, and many others, the Champions League is highly anticipated, and now UEFA wants to promote changes in its operation to have even more games.

The main intention is for Europe's biggest clubs to play even more games against each other, thus making the competition even more competitive.

After all, the more games, the more excitement for the fans, right? The only problem is that these changes cause several consequences, and we'll check out some of them here.

Firstly, the biggest change in this competition is that the famous Champions League group stage will no longer exist.

Additionally, the number of teams will increase from 32 to 36, which means there will be more games and more opportunities for teams from different countries to compete.

As UEFA's intention is to promote a greater number of games, this was one of the changes adopted.

You may be asking, if there will no longer be a group stage, how will the teams for the knockout stage be selected? Don’t worry, Minuto Vip responds!

Now there will not be eight groups, there will be 36 teams, all in a single group, where they will play 8 times, against opponents defined by UEFA criteria that have not yet been announced.

After these eight games, the 8 best teams will go straight to the round of 16, and will wait for their opponents to play in the qualifiers.

After the initial 8 games, the team that occupies 9th place among the 28 remaining will play against the 24th placed team, the 10th placed team will play against the 23rd placed team and so on.

In other words, apart from the eight teams that qualified, and the teams that were placed below 24th place. The second best placed team plays against the second worst placed team and so on until eight matches are formed.

See the examples below:

And so on until the eight confrontations are formed.

After that, the teams in this preliminary phase will face each other in round-trip games, the teams that win the dispute will face the eight teams that advanced to the round of 16 in advance.

From this change in the early stages, it works exactly as in the old Champions League format. 

The Round of 16, Quarterfinals and Semifinals in round-trip games, and finally, the final in a single game.

The main impact will be the increase in the number of games, since with more teams, more games will be needed to define the champion team.

Furthermore, with the increase in games, broadcasting rights will also have a much higher value, which will influence the clubs' revenue.

It will certainly be possible to see an impact on the financial side of the clubs, which could lead to an improvement in the squads of the participating teams, especially clubs considered to be “weaker”.

The classification system adopted will basically be the one used previously, according to the classification of clubs in their national championships.

However, in addition to these traditional places, four places will be added in the new format and will be distributed according to UEFA criteria.

Now that you have seen the main changes to the Champions League, take a look at their main advantages and disadvantages:

The main advantage of this new format is that there will be more teams, and more games, which is everything fans of this competition wanted.

More games to watch and more teams participating. Furthermore, the new format will favor the confrontation of large teams, which will result in a large number of excellent matches.

The main disadvantage is still one of the problems that UEFA faces, which is how will parity be maintained in the first phase of this competition?

Since there are 36 teams in this phase, each will face only 8, according to criteria that have not yet been announced.

Therefore, the teams faced teams that were different from each other, messing up the parity of the competition a little.

Since a team may end up being able to qualify by taking a sequence of “easier” matches than another team.

For example, team A faces, in its sequence of games: Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern, team B faces Lyon, Valencia and Ajax. Team A will face much tougher opponents.

Just thinking about these great teams facing each other makes you miss watching the Champions League, doesn't it?

Take advantage of the fact that this competition is still going on and check out our articles here for more details about the 2023 edition, and how to watch the games.

Access our article below and see how to watch this year's Champions League. Hurry because this year's edition is on fire.