Also defeats the purpose of finding out who the best team is which is kind of the point of the CL. If anything, make it seeded. Like a tennis competition.
No, not a chance just a stale and boring format. Much prefer the league table thing but I would have reduced the total from 36 to around mid twenties as I believe the Champions league is about 'champions' than any team finishing lower in their respective league. May have a Europa league thing for second and third placed teams and a separate cup winners cup for all domestic cup winners.
That's different, the point of the Champions 'league' is that it is played as a league. The FA cup is a knock out competition right from it's birth. The European competitions were knock out but just did not prove successful as the bigger teams would go out in turgid boring second legs games.
Ni it cuts out the negative tactics from smaller teams, I wasn't around then but some legs were just terrible to watch, the Champions league structure has made the competition more interesting and made sure all the games are worth playing for with balanced groups
Remove the two legs semis for one week of football where both the semis and final are single leg. As it stands, UEFA needs 19 matchdays to fulfil their new look competition. Removing the two legged semi finals frees up two matchdays. At the moment they utilise 15 matchdays so would need to find two more to make their new schedule work.
Or get rid of all the stupid group stages and just throw everyone in a pot and if City play Liverpool in 1st round so be it, someone's going out.
PL fighting against the planned reform, but also looking to reach a compromise at 8 games in the groups as opposed to 10. Cannot help but feel UEFA have just used pretty basic negotiating tactics of setting your stall out above what is acceptable - I am sure 8 will suit them fine but still add 64 games into the calendar for clubs in the Champions League. And then before long - it'll be 10 anyway.
8 wouldn't change anything in terms of a schedule. Currently, there are 15 date ranges used for the CL: - 6 group stage matches (6) - staggered last 16 ties that take up four dates. (4) - quarters (2) - semis (2) - final (1) Under the new system (and taking in UEFA's idea for a 'finals week') - 8 group stage matches (8) - play-off knock out round (2) - last 16 (2) - quarter finals (2) The same number of dates are actually used before the one legged 'finals week' at the end of the season. There's a guaranteed 2 game increase in matches for everyone but the number of games you could play only increases by 1.....of course teams who qualify top of their group don't partake in the play off round, so would have less games. Teams will play more games due to the increase of matches in the group phase but the actual schedule wouldn't see additional games added to it.....phew, got there in the end.
