The Champions League draw is set for an overhaul this summer after UEFA worked out it would take “three or four hours” to stage the draw manually under the competition’s new format. European football’s governing body is introducing new looks for all three of its men’s club competitions for next season, with a 36-team league phase replacing the 32-team Champions League group phase that has been in place since the 1999-2000 season.
Every team will face eight different opponents in the league phase as UEFA looks to create a format which reduces the number of dead rubbers, pits big teams against each other earlier in the competition and places extra significance on finishing position in the league when it comes to the knockout draw. With Celtic and Rangers vying for the cinch Premiership title – Rangers lead their Old Firm rivals by two points with nine matches to go – the draw format will be of interest to them. The league winners advance directly to the group stages, while the runners-up enter Europe’s blue riband competition in the third qualifying round. Currently teams are drawn manually from seeded pots, but UEFA’s deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti admitted it would not be possible for the draw to remain fully manual, estimating the Champions League draw alone could last “three or four hours” and feature around 900 balls if it continued as it is now.
UEFA said the precise format for the draw was still in the final development phase but that it would be a “hybrid” event involving some manual drawing of balls and some automation. UEFA said any automated elements would continue to be independently audited to avoid any accusations of the draw being rigged. Teams from the same country will be kept apart until the new knockout round play-off, other than in very exceptional circumstances, with the new round to be contested by the teams finishing ninth to 24th in the league phase. UEFA is then introducing a tennis-style seeding system from the last 16 onwards, so that the clubs finishing first and second in the league phase are kept in separate halves of the draw and cannot meet until the final.
The league phase reserves two European performance spots (EPS) for teams from the countries who were collectively the best performers in the previous season’s European campaign. Italy and Germany currently occupy those spots which would mean the fifth-placed teams in each of those leagues – at the moment Roma and RB Leipzig – gaining the EPS. England are one place behind Germany, which could mean Manchester United finding themselves in the unusual situation of hoping bitter rivals Manchester City and Liverpool win the Champions League and Europa League respectively to potentially open up a fifth Champions League qualifying spot via the Premier League table.
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