UEFA are looking at Champions League reforms ahead of next season.
The continent’s biggest prize was re-shaped this season to include a league phase rather than the traditional group stage, with 36 clubs qualifying for the extended first round of the competition rather than the traditional 32.
While changes to the competition have been met with mixed reviews, however, there have been huge benefits for clubs like Arsenal, who are through to only their third-ever Champions League semi-final, following a storming victory over Real Madrid over two legs.
Arsenal have profited from the Champions League reforms – but they may not have the same luck next season…
Purely from looking at the UCL’s league phase table from 2024/25, the cream has risen to the top, with three of the top four from that stage of the competition – Barcelona, Arsenal and Inter Milan – into the semi-finals of the competition.
Yet UEFA appear to be unhappy with the way that the Champions League has panned out under their new format, with next month’s eventual winner set to be a team who haven’t won it in the last decade.
According to Spanish outlet Mundo Deportivo, citing a report from German newspaper BILD on Thursday, there is serious consideration being given to further rule tweaks, as UEFA could scupper Mikel Arteta’s side from repeating their heroics in quite the same way again.
Apparently, the European governing body wants to swap the order of home and away legs in the knockout stages of the competition – or even prevent clubs from the same country from meeting until the quarter-finals at least.
As a higher seed than Madrid, Arsenal were able to rack up a 3-0 lead on their own turf against the European champions in the quarter-finals, knowing that even a loss in the Bernabeu would see them through.
While hosting the second leg could well be seen as beneficial, this is purely subjective given the unpredictable nature of the competition and will favour some teams and not others: would Arsenal have breezed into the next round of the competition quite so easily, for example?
Furthermore, preventing a Madrid derby in the last-16 would have perhaps seen the Gunners face a trickier tie than PSV – with same-country ties almost always affecting the bigger clubs in the tournament.
FourFourTwo understands that ‘nation protecting’ might be the most difficult part of UEFA’s plans to implement – but there are other ideas that the competition have put forward, as they look to move away from extra-time.
Under the new plans, draws will result in straight penalty shootouts rather than 30 more minutes of regulation football, saving tired legs and skipping to the spot-kicks, in an idea much more likely to be lauded by fans.
If approved by the UEFA Competitions Committee, these tweaks could become part of the agenda of the UEFA Executive Committee, which will meet on May 30, 24 hours before the 2024/25 Champions League final in Munich.
