The UEFA Champions League, arguably the world's biggest club competition, is reportedly set for a huge shake-up. Here is the potential new format change explained, as well as when it will officially be introduced.
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The Champions League is regarded by many as the biggest and best club tournament in the world, but there is likely to be a format change in the coming years, as is expected to soon to be announced by Europe's governing body for football, UEFA.
The current format sees 32 clubs participate in the competition every season, but from 2024, when the format change is reportedly set to occur, 36 teams will compete using the Swiss model.
What this means is that instead of eight different groups of four teams, the Champions League will become a single 36-team league, although it will operate differently from a normal league.
Click through the mini-gallery below to see the quarter-final fixtures for this season's Champions League!
With the Swiss model, teams play a set number of matches rather than play against every other side in the league, with the new Champions League format likely to see teams playing 10 games decided by a seeding system.
In this case, the seeding system will reportedly be designed in a way that all competing clubs play 10 matches each, against low-, medium- and high-ranked teams.
After those 10 rounds of fixtures have been played, the top eight teams will progress to the knockout stage of the tournament, and those eight clubs would also be guaranteed a spot in the next season's Champions League.
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To determine the other eight teams that progress to the round of 16, teams that finished in places 9 to 24 will go up against one another in a play-off. Finally, the knockout rounds will work in the same way the current system does.
