Uefa discussed allowing teams to pick opposition in new Champions League format

Uefa general secretary Theodore Theodoridis said he liked radical idea, but colleagues and clubs were not keen

Uefa considered a tweak to the new Champions League format in which the best performing clubs in the first round could pick their first knockout opponents in a live television event – but the idea never gathered enough support.
General secretary Theodore Theodoridis said on Tuesday he liked the idea of a radical suggestion for the new Champions League in which the eight highest-ranked clubs after the first round could pick their opponents instead of them being selected by a conventional draw.
The new Champions League launches next season, with 36 clubs in a single division in the first round. Each club is assigned eight games against eight different opponents, unlike the current format where four teams are pitted against one another in a group, home and away. From next season, a club’s eight opponents will be drawn two apiece from each of the four pots of nine teams, ranked by coefficient.
The top eight finishers will go straight to the next round, while those in positions nine to 24 will play off to join them. The round of 16 will be seeded, keeping the top eight apart, although Theodoridis said Uefa had brainstormed another option based loosely on American sport.
Asked whether this had been an option to incentivise teams to keep competing throughout their eight games to finish as high as possible in the new 36-team division, he said it had come up in talks.
“The ones who have followed American sport – there was a proposal and that was discussed … as the [college] draft in the different American sports,” Theodoridis said. “The team that finishes first [chooses first]. Imagine a live TV event where you have 30 seconds to choose your opponent. The team also has the possibility to [use] social media and the supporters to choose and so on. Nobody else liked it [the proposal]. I did but including my [Uefa] colleagues and the clubs – nobody liked it.
Theodoridis joked such a format would be “huge commercially.” He added: “Imagine the captain and the coach of each team selecting, so we start [with the host saying] “‘No 1 you are on the clock; No 2 you are on the clock’.”
It was calculated that, if done manually, the draw for the games in the first round – the 36 team “Swiss model” would take “three or four hours” and feature 900 draw balls, according to Uefa deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti, who oversees Uefa competitions. As a result the draw will be done by a software programme designed for the task, albeit with some manual input. For integrity purposes the draw will be audited by an independent third party, as is common in lotteries and other automated competitions.
The new Champions League, with the same format adopted in the Europa League and Conference League, is Uefa’s big new idea to keep clubs happy and increase television revenues in the aftermath of the failure of the breakaway European Super League (ESL) in 2021. Much is resting on it being a success for Uefa, and the format is designed to ensure there are more games between big clubs from the start.
Uefa also admits privately the format will take some getting used to by the football public, with a unique set of fixtures for every club in the first round, two extra games to the current format and the end of the home and away principle. Clubs will play four home and four away games in the first round but against eight different opponents.
Uefa has long tried to build consensus among clubs, all of which agreed to the new format and the distribution plan for the revenue last year. Real Madrid and Barcelona remain the only two ESL rebels. The ESL, and its advisors A22 Sports, propose scrapping the three competitions, dropping Uefa and launching their own three-tier league system with promotion and relegation.
However, in the ESL proposals, new qualifiers via domestic leagues would only join the third division and have to work their way up. Which raises the possibility that a club like Aston Villa finishing fourth in the Premier League above an established European club like Manchester United or Chelsea, would be in a lower ESL division.
An executive at A22 said this week that it was speaking privately to Premier League clubs about its proposal. Marcetti said that Uefa and the clubs had discussed a similar proposal in 2019 but rejected it on the basis that it would “destroy domestic [European] leagues.”
He said: “Take [domestic] leagues where it is already clear [early in the season] who is the winner. They have a big gap between the top club and the others. The main focus point is who qualifies for Champions League. Think of a scenario where a number of clubs already know they are in Europe. They are in the top league whatever it is. What will happen to them? What are they fighting for?
“Today the battle for fourth position is a battle for life for clubs. Now, it is like night and day between being in the Champions League and not being there. If I am in fourth or fifth and in January [and] I know I’m qualified [for Europe next season], what should I play for?
“This will be a significant downside for the integrity of the league, that this club will not have any incentive to compete. And the sporting downside becomes a serious commercial burden in the sense that the matches are not so interesting, the stakes are not there. Most probably the commercial value of the competition is also going down.”
There are two extra places in the new Champions League format for clubs from the two highest ranking domestic leagues by Uefa coefficient. Five out of the last six years the top performer has been the Premier League.
This season the two top spots are currently occupied by Italy and Germany, although performance of Premier League clubs in all three Uefa competitions in the next round could change that.