Ever since Uefa announced its plans to alter the format of the Champions League in 2021, the impact on matches has been a hot topic. Scrutiny has only increased since the changes were implemented in time for the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n
After beginning life as a six-team invitational tournament in 1955-56 before growing to a 32-team knockout tournament in 1967, the Champions League as we know it began in 1992.<\/p>\n
A group stage was added, with the last 16 entering a knockout phase. There was a brief spell with two group stages, but this was reverted back to the single group-stage format for the 2003-04 tournament.<\/p>\n
The group stage previously featured 32 teams in eight groups of four, with the top two sides from each of those groups qualifying for the last 16.<\/p>\n
For the start of the 2024-25 season, the group stage was replaced with a 36-team league phase, with each side playing eight one-off fixtures instead of six games against three teams.<\/p>\n
The top eight finishers qualify directly for the knockout stages, with those placed ninth to 24th entering a two-legged play-off stage.<\/p>\n
The bottom eight are eliminated, meaning that after eight matches, 24 sides are still in the competition. Some argue that that creates a lack of jeopardy, which encourages teams to play more expansively.<\/p>\n
But do more goals equal better quality? <\/p>\n
“I think the entertainment has gone up, although I’m not sure the quality has gone up,” The Times football writer Tom Arnott told BBC Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n
“If I’m looking at the games it’s brilliant to watch and thrilling because the football itself is fantastic – but what do they mean?<\/p>\n
“The lack of jeopardy, why would PSG and Barcelona play for a draw, why not go for it? If you need five wins from the eight games you know you’ve got some margin there. If you lose it’s OK. I think the format allows all the teams to loosen up.<\/p>\n
“The entertainment value is there but I think you come away from these matches sometimes and still think ‘what does it all mean?’. The lack of jeopardy early on does deliver entertainment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever since Uefa announced its plans to alter the format of the Champions League in 2021, the impact…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-809358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}