The Champions League. UEFA’s flagship tournament where there are more domestic failures than champions that participate in the competition, is set for a shake up with the amount of teams in the groups stages being increased from the current format of 32 teams to 36 teams from season 2024/25.
There was a fear that the competition would have been an exclusive club for Europe’s big five leagues which would have meant freezing out smaller nations like Scotland, Holland and Belgium, but UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin revealed during a Slovakian talk show, that those plans are not in place and the focus is solely on making the competition “much more open”.
Ceferin revealed, “The plan is for 36 teams to play in the Champions League. Everyone will still be able to qualify for it. The matter is still in the development phase.
“We have been working on this for a year. It will be a new league and will make the competition more interesting, but at the same time, it will still allow clubs from other countries to compete. It will be a much more open competition.
“Last week, I talked about it with all 55 nations of UEFA, all of whom were enthusiastic.
And here, in my opinion, is the real reason that the revamp is taking place. Nothing to do with inclusion, it is all about protecting the so called “elite” leagues popularity as Ceferin went on, “The more popular the Champions League and the Europa League are, the more the big leagues’ popularity can decline, not the smaller ones.
“The so-called European Super League has never been close. My colleagues who have been in football for a long time tell me that this is a story that has been dragging on for 30 years.”
So whilst this “revamp” is welcome news to Celtic and the Scottish league, it is clear that the purpose of the overhaul is to still protect the coffers of the créme de la créme.