Has the new Champions League format lived up to expectations?

Karan Ahgun

— 3 min read
Has the new Champions League format lived up to expectations?

The new UEFA Champions League League Phase ended on Wednesday with a football bonanza of 18 matches being played simultaneously. Many of these matches had some jeopardy in terms of where clubs would finish in the table, which added to the excitement of the night. This final match day was exciting and would have definitely surprised fans who were skeptical of the introduction of the new format.

UEFA announced that its club competitions would be adopting a Swiss-format from this season on in 2023. Unsurprisingly, this news was not received warmly, especially as some saw it as UEFA using the change as a way to appease the European Super League clubs who wanted to implement something similar to this. Football fans do not easily embrace change in the sport, so there was always going to be some level of resistance to the change. Just look at the resistance VAR still encounters today, despite being in use for 5+ years. However, if this season's League Phase is anything to go by, negative perceptions about the new format will likely change for the better.

The final match day of this season's Champions League League Phase was filled with drama. Going into the games, 27 teams still had their futures in the competition in limbo. The most attention was on Manchester City's game against Club Brugge as City needed a win to avoid elimination from the competition. The match itself did not disappoint in terms of drama. The Belgian side took the lead before half-time and were posing a lot of danger on the counter-attack. At half-time, it was looking sticky for City but they were able to come through with a better second-half performance. The final match day also provided a lot of goals, with 64 goals scored across the 18 games. Lille and PSG were free-scoring in their games, with the former being able to remarkably gain automatic qualification for the round of 16. The sheer amount of drama within the 18 matches would have made UEFA feel vindicated in implementing this new format to bring their audience more entertainment.

Key to the entertainment in this season's Champions League has been the amount of "big games" there have been throughout the League Phase. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool and more participated in a number of big games, and they certainly delivered the entertainment UEFA promised. Alongside this, there were a few surprise results from clubs like Lille (who beat both Madrid teams) and Aston Villa (who beat Bayern Munich). However, with the increased number of entertaining matches, fixture congestion and fan travels have been a downside to this new format. Fans have been hit with massive costs for tickets and the added fixtures have increased concerns around player welfare.

Overall, the new Champions League format has been successful in this inaugural League Phase. The entertainment factor has improved massively as there is more balance and variety amongst the fixture list compared to the group stages of seasons gone by. The drama of the final match day really did top off what was an excellent League Phase.

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