The EFL has confirmed the Sky Bet Championship play-offs will be expanded from four to six teams from next season onwards.<\/p>\n
EFL chief executive Trevor Birch said: “Since their introduction in 1986\/87, the play-offs have become a highlight of the domestic football calendar, capturing the drama, suspense and jeopardy that make the EFL so special.<\/p>\n
“Following several months of discussion with clubs and other stakeholders, we are confident this change will further strengthen the Championship as a competition and give more clubs and their supporters a genuine opportunity of achieving promotion.”<\/p>\n
Monterosa<\/p>\n
This content is provided by Monterosa, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Monterosa cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> Supporters of the change believe it will create more interest in the run-in to the Championship season, as it gives more teams a chance to qualify for the post-season and a shot at promotion to the Premier League. Teams finishing between third and eighth will be involved.<\/p>\n The National League currently operates a six-team play-off tournament, where the teams finishing second and third progress straight to the semi-finals while those finishing fourth to seventh compete in quarter-finals.<\/p>\n The current format in the EFL – with a single-leg final at Wembley preceded by two-leg semi-finals – has been in place since the 1989\/90 season.<\/p>\n The Championship play-off final has come to be regarded as the most lucrative single game in world football, given a place in the Premier League is at stake to the winners.<\/p>\n Sunderland were last season’s victors, overcoming Sheffield United 2-1. The success was estimated to have secured a minimum of \u00a3200m in extra income for the Black Cats.<\/p>\n YouTube<\/p>\n This content is provided by YouTube, which may be using cookies and other technologies. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to YouTube cookies. Enable Cookies<\/a> What could change?<\/p>\n While the format will not be confirmed until the summer, it is expected that the expansion would see the play-offs take this shape:<\/p>\n 1st and 2nd are automatically promoted as normal.3rd and 4th qualify for the semi-finals.5th vs 8th, and 6th vs 7th in one-off eliminator ties at the home of the side who finishes higher up the league.The winners of the eliminator ties progress to the semi-finals, to face 3rd and 4th in the format that currently exists – two-legged ties with the second leg at the home of the side that finishes higher up the league.As per usual, the winners of the two semi-finals meet at Wembley for a place in the Premier League. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EFL has confirmed the Sky Bet Championship play-offs will be expanded from four to six teams from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-330232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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