Champions League returns with a new format. The best way to understand it? Don’t even try

For many years, the UEFA Champions League group stage started yearly on the second or third Tuesday in September, and in 2024 … nicely, to a point, right here we go once more.

Soccer’s preeminent membership competitors returns this week to 12 international locations throughout Europe and billions of screens globally. Actual Madrid opens one more title protection. Liverpool visits AC Milan. Juventus and Aston Villa, again after absences brief and lengthy, headline Tuesday’s curtain-raisers (12:45 p.m. ET, Paramount+).

However this, the beginning of the 2024-25 “Champions League correct,” shouldn’t be a bunch stage — as a result of there aren’t any teams.

It is a “league part” that can possible confuse the hell out of viewers who attempt to realize it — so the most effective strategy, for now, might be to not even attempt.

The very best strategy is to look at the video games, and respect the soccer, and know that if Atalanta beats Arsenal on Thursday (3 p.m. ET, Paramount+), that issues.

If Girona upsets PSG on Wednesday in Paris, the upstart Spaniards will enhance their odds of reaching the knockout rounds.

The outcomes of Manchester Metropolis-Inter Milan (Wednesday, 3 p.m. ET), and Monaco-Barcelona (Thursday, 3 p.m. ET), and a dozen different video games needs to be significant.

However they’re going to imply lower than early Champions League video games used to imply. Particular implications will not grow to be clear till January. Organizers have launched a brand new format that may in the end make the competitors extra entertaining. For now, although, it’ll simply be tougher to decipher.

The brand new Champions League format

The Champions League, after all, was fantastically simplistic. Eight teams of 4; play every opponent twice; high two advance.

Then UEFA went searching for extra — extra video games, extra groups, extra showdowns between superclubs, more cash. It expanded the sphere (from 32 to 36), and settled on a so-called “Swiss format” mostly utilized in chess tournaments.

Now, there’s one massive group of 36. There are eight video games apiece as an alternative of six. And there aren’t any pods, no clusters or groupings, no head-to-head ingredient.

Arsenal, for instance, begins at Atalanta, then performs PSG, Shakhtar Donetsk, Inter Milan, Sporting CP (Lisbon), Monaco, Dinamo Zagreb and Girona.

Atalanta begins with Arsenal, then performs Shakhtar Donetsk, Celtic, Stuttgart, BSC Younger Boys, Actual Madrid, Sturm Graz and Barcelona.

Beforehand, Arsenal needed to be higher than two of its three group opponents. Now, it has to complete within the high 24 of 36 groups to achieve the knockout rounds; and the highest 8 to skip instantly into the Spherical of 16.

In different phrases, teams have been changed by a single league desk. And on the finish of the truncated season — the eight-game “league part” — a crew’s place within the desk determines its destiny:

• 1st-Eighth: Qualify for the Spherical of 16

• Ninth-Sixteenth: Play-in spherical vs. inferior crew (from the Seventeenth-Twenty fourth bucket under)

• Seventeenth-Twenty fourth: Play-in spherical vs. superior crew (from the Ninth-Sixteenth bucket above)

• Twenty fifth-Thirty sixth: Eradicated

Golf equipment will slide up and down the one desk as they win and lose video games. The desk might be a fixture on broadcasts and social media, serving to groups and their followers assess progress. If you would like to grasp the format, and observe your membership’s standing, and gauge knockout-round hopes, the desk is your greatest wager.

However, with the schedule unbalanced and the “league” so bloated, the desk may even be crowded and misleading. For a lot of the “season,” Twenty fifth place (elimination) and Eighth (bye) will possible be separated by lower than six factors — lower than two video games.

Worrying about particular rivals and placements, due to this fact, might be pointless. Specializing in the broader image might be futile. The one certainty — and the one lens by means of which to view these early rounds — is that three factors are higher than one, and one higher than zero.

What’s going to it take to qualify for knockout rounds?

If you would like to trace progress within the early rounds, give attention to thresholds.

We do not know who would be the crew to beat to crack the highest eight, however we are able to predict what number of factors might be required. Historical past and simulations counsel that the thresholds might be, roughly:

• 1st-Eighth: 16+ factors

• Ninth-Sixteenth: 12-16 factors

• Seventeenth-Twenty fourth: 9-12 factors

• Twenty fifth-Thirty sixth: 0-9 factors

In different phrases: Win six of your eight video games, and also you’re into the Spherical of 16; win 5 of eight, and you’ve got a good likelihood.

Win 4, and you may head to the play-in spherical; win three, and you may possible sneak in as nicely.

There isn’t a approach to guess whom you may sneak in forward of; so, for seven of eight rounds, there isn’t a sense in caring about situations or foes. There isn’t a must look forward at matchups. There may be solely a must win — and attempt to hit these targets (say, 17 factors, or 10).

If teams had been a six-lap, four-man race round a observe, that is primarily an eight-lap time trial; and the qualifying lower, the time to beat, is projectable however not fairly mounted, and fully out of anybody crew’s management.

The cynical view of the Champions League

The cynical view of this gluttonous format is that will probably be a roundabout path to a well-known vacation spot.

Does it actually matter if Bayern Munich drops a couple of video games, or Man Metropolis slips out of the highest eight?

They might absolutely run roughshod over Celtic or Brugge, or whichever overmatched opponent they draw within the play-in spherical.

The half-dozen true contenders, those with multiples more cash than everyone else, will certainly end within the high 24; and certain find yourself within the latter levels, irrespective of the place, precisely, they end on this “league part.” As a result of they virtually at all times do.

However the romantic view is that the Champions League is not all concerning the superclub that wins it. It is about deafening European nights at Celtic Park, and tough journeys to Prague or Zagreb. It is concerning the stage that Aston Villa and Stuttgart and Bologna and Girona and Brest now get to share with Liverpool, Bayern, Juventus, Barcelona and PSG. It is about tales like Shakhtar Donetsk, and erstwhile giants like Crvena zvezda (Crimson Star Belgrade). It is about Feyenoord and a dozen different golf equipment who now, not like earlier than, can realistically purpose for the knockout levels — and dream.

Methods to watch Champions League video games

All of them start their campaigns this week, on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

On Matchday 2, in early October, the acquainted Tuesday-Wednesday rhythm resumes, with 9 video games every day — two at 12:45 p.m. ET, seven at 3 p.m. ET — and the Europa League and Convention League on Thursdays.

Paramount+ and CBS networks will broadcast all of it to the US in English. The Spanish-language broadcaster within the U.S. is Telemundo.

The betting favorites are the final two champions: Manchester Metropolis and Actual Madrid.