La Gazzetta dello Sport, this morning, provides details on the new competition, which will probably start in 2024.
The first important news is that it will be a 36-team competition. One-way matches, minimum 10, maximum 17 for those who reach the final. In short, an American-style tournament that excites UEFA's imagination . At the moment there are 32 teams , so it is not clear what will be the criteria for adding these four teams: it is possible that in the top leagues there is the possibility of qualifying with 5 teams , giving life to even more exciting matches.
UEFA believes the current Champions League is too outdated. The idea is therefore to increase the number of matches to get more money from TV and sponsors.
The first sixteen will face each other in the elimination phase, and from the seventeenth to the twenty-fourth position they would be relegated to the Europa League .
The automatic entry for the Champions League of the following year would also change: Not only the winner would be promoted directly, but all four semifinalists would be automatically registered in the following review. It is a format that follows the NFL of American football, one of the richest leagues in the world.
The problem is that, with an already full schedule, the matches will also increase. It would go from 125 total games to 209. Furthermore, if we obviously exclude the winner of the Champions League, who will be qualified by right in the year of success, the other available places will have to be won through the championship. The Europa League, on the other hand, will remain with 32 teams. UEFA's goal is to reach an annual turnover of over 4 billion.
Milan obviously hopes to experience all this as a protagonist, perhaps one day dreaming of winning the Champions League again.
