ZURICH, SWITZERLAND.- The UEFA revealed last Wednesday that the draw for the next and innovative edition of the Champions League It will be a hybrid, with a small manual section to draw the corresponding balls for each team and another, the most important, totally digital, with software that will randomly determine the rivals of each club.
The highest body of European club football, which has already used a ‘software’ To help the correct development of the draw, it reported this Tuesday in a telematic meeting that it will implement a similar technology to decide the 8 matches of each team in the group stage of the Champions Leaguewith a novel format in the form of a league with 36 teams.
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In this new competition format, those finishing between 1st and 8th will go directly to the round of 16; those finishing between 9th and 24th will play a two-legged play-off to enter; and those finishing between 25th and 36th will be eliminated.
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The 36 teams will be ranked before the draw, according to their coefficient, in 4 pots. The only one whose coefficient is not taken into account is the current champion, in this case the Real Madridwhich will go to pot 1 anyway. The same will happen in future editions.
Each team will face 2 teams from its own pot and another 2 from each of the other 3 remaining pots for a total of 8 matches, of which it will play 4 at home and 4 away. The matches that each team plays at home or away are also decided randomly by the aforementioned ‘software’.
Thus, each team will play a total of 8 matches in the Champions League and Europa League, while in the Conference League there will be only 6. In this last competition there will be 6 pots instead of 4 and the teams will face a team from each pot, including their own.
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The draw format maintains the rule of not pitting 2 teams from the same country against each other and includes a new rule of not placing a team against more than 2 rivals from another country. For example, a Spanish team cannot face another Spanish team and cannot face more than 2 English teams in this first phase.
As explained Tobias HedtstueckDirector of Club Competitions of the UEFAif the previous system had been maintained, the draw would have lasted more than 3 hours and more than 1,000 balls and 36 drums would have had to be used.
