The Champions League has been restructured, and the group stage has become history!36 teams staged a "Swiss League"!

The six rounds of the group stage of this year's Champions League have all ended, and the competition has also come to an end, as the 2024/25 season will start with a new format and no group stage for the time being. With the number of teams in the Champions League next season set to increase from 32 to 36, how does the new format, known as the 'Swiss model', work, and how does the format differ from what teams face today?

The current format of the Champions League is familiar to everyone: the winners of the last Champions League and Europa League, the 24 teams that have achieved the corresponding league position based on European points, and six qualifying teams – a total of 32 teams will advance to the group stage. They will then be divided into eight groups, and after two legs, the top two teams from each group will advance to the round of 16.

The group stage becomes a league

The biggest difference between the new Champions League format from the 2024/25 season is that the number of teams will be increased to 36, and then the traditional group stage will be replaced by a single "Champions League". Each team is divided into 4 seeding pots with 9 teams each.

Each team has a total of 8 games to play at this stage, 4 of which are at home and 4 away. In these eight matches, each team will play two matches against opponents in each of the four divisions, one at home and one away.

After eight matches, the top 8 teams in the league will automatically advance to the round of 16, while the 9th to 24th places will play two knockout legs to compete for the remaining eight places in the round of 16, with teams under the top 25 eliminated. Unlike in the past, the teams that are eliminated will not qualify for the Europa League.

To increase the importance of the Champions League, teams in the 9th to 16th place will face 17th to 24th place in the play-offs, 9th place will face 24th, 10th place will face 23rd place, and so on, while the top 8 teams will be seeded in the round of 16 and will face opponents who have progressed later and have a worse record.

Once in the round of 16, all the rules will be the same as before, and the Europa League and UEFA Europa League will be played in the same format, but the latter will only play six games in the league stage.

For those of you who haven't been exposed to the "Swiss-style" format, we can start with this season's example, as shown in the chart below.

Before the draw, UEFA will divide the teams into 4 tiers, each team will draw 2 teams in groups 1, 2, 3 and 4, and after 8 rounds, all teams will decide whether to advance, play-off or exit according to the points ranking.

Manchester City in the picture above, for example, under the new format, they may face Bayern Munich and Barcelona in Division 1, Real Madrid and Manchester United in Division 2, and so on, before reaching the round of 16.

There will be more clashes in advance

The old group stage system, the same team is divided into 4 levels and then drawn, each group will have 4 levels of teams, will not be repeated, which also means that the strong team duel will be relatively rare, and the teams in each group have been divided into levels in advance, the drama is inevitably less attractive.

Under the new format, each team will face four levels of opponents, and the schedule of strong teams against strong teams will naturally be staged in advance, without waiting for the knockout stage, on the other hand, the weak teams will also have a fairer schedule, even the team in the fourth division will face the fourth division opponents in two rounds, and do not need to face higher level opponents in succession in the group stage as in the past.

And with 36 teams in the same standings, the final round of fixtures could be crucial and uncertain.

Load the players

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said the new format would improve the balance of competition between teams, while also allowing fans to see more of Europe's top teams face off. In terms of format reform, we can see the top of the leagues playing in European competitions much earlier, and all teams will have to face different levels of opponents without discrimination, and this seems to be the case on the surface.

However, due to the increase in the number of participating teams to 36 teams and the completion of these eight regular season matches, the 16 teams ranked 9th to 24th will still have to play two more knockout legs – the total number of matches will increase from 125 to 189 under the new format (excluding qualifiers).

Each team will have to play eight games before reaching the round of 16, two more than in the past, and two more if they finish in the middle of the Champions League. In the past, the group stage of the Champions League ended in December, but under the new format, the Champions League will not end until January. Intensive fixtures undoubtedly increase the physical load on players and increase the risk of injury. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for the fans?