Europe’s leagues informed UEFA on Friday to reduce its plans geared toward including extra Champions League matches and serving to groups to qualify based mostly on their historic performances within the competitors.
“An increase of more than 50% of games will hurt the vast majority of clubs and benefit very few,” European Leagues chairman Claus Thomsen mentioned after a gathering in Istanbul. “We need to have a lower number of rounds.”
The divisions inside European soccer come a 12 months after UEFA united with the leagues to thwart a Super League breakaway by elite golf equipment which might nonetheless profit from the modifications deliberate to the Champions League from 2024.
The competitors is because of broaden from 32 to 36 groups with two slots put aside for groups with a robust five-season European report which fail to qualify based mostly on their home league place.
The European Leagues group met to formalize its opposition to the safety-net locations for the most important golf equipment, telling UEFA that each one Champions League spots have to be based mostly on qualification secured from the earlier season’s home outcomes.
UEFA has been urged forward of key conferences in Vienna subsequent month that it should roll again the enlargement of the group stage, so it solely grows from six to eight video games per crew moderately than the ten envisaged from 2024 based mostly round a single standings format.
The proposed locations for 2 groups based mostly on their UEFA “coefficient” factors are value tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in prize cash and would reward an elite crew having a poor season and likewise guarantee broadcasters can nonetheless present the most important groups within the Champions League. Those groups would nonetheless have to complete in a Europa League qualification spot — or win their home cup — to make the bounce as much as the Champions League moderately than ending decrease and leapfrogging higher-place rivals.
But the European Leagues group needs the historic efficiency locations stripped utterly from the format to make sure all spots are earned by sporting advantage the earlier season. The exemption is the place put aside, as now, for the precise Champions League winners in the event that they fail to qualify by the league.
“On the whole European Super League issue we saw football in Europe coming together and agreeing on certain things including that it is sporting merit that takes us from one level to the next and we should not have closed tournaments and that we should not move in that direction,” Thomsen mentioned. “You could argue it is only two places and now no leapfrogging but you are leaving the basic principle and in the end I trust UEFA will move in that direction as well.”
Thomsen, who’s chief government of the Danish league, sits on the UEFA Club Competitions Committee, which can meet on May 10. The committee makes formal proposals for approval by the European governing physique’s government committee, which can meet later that day in Vienna, Austria.
