Sports Desk, Aug 14 (EFE).- UEFA revealed on Wednesday that the draw for the next and innovative edition of the Champions League will be hybrid, with a small manual section to draw the corresponding balls for each team and another, the most important, totally digital, with a ‘software’ that will randomly determine the rivals of each club.
The governing body of European club football, which has already used software in recent editions to help the draw proceed correctly, announced in a telematic meeting on Tuesday that it will implement similar technology to decide the eight matches of each team in the group stage of the Champions League, with a novel format in the form of a group stage with 36 teams.
In this new competition format, those finishing between 1st and 8th will go directly to the round of 16; those finishing between 9th and 24th will play a two-legged play-off to enter; and those finishing between 25th and 36th will be eliminated.
The 36 teams will be ranked in four pots according to their coefficient before the draw. The only team whose coefficient is not taken into account is the current champion, in this case Real Madrid, who will go to pot 1 in any case. The same will happen in future editions.
Each team will face 2 teams from its own pot and 2 others from each of the other 3 remaining pots for a total of 8 matches, of which 4 will be played at home and 4 away. The matches that each team will play at home or away will also be decided randomly by the aforementioned software.
Thus, each team will play a total of 8 matches in the Champions League and Europa League, while in the Conference League there will be only 6. In this last competition there will be 6 pots instead of 4 and the teams will face a team from each pot, including their own.
The draw format maintains the rule of not pitting 2 teams from the same country against each other and includes a new rule of not placing a team against more than 2 rivals from another country. For example, a Spanish team cannot face another Spanish team and cannot face more than 2 English teams in this first phase.
According to UEFA Director of Club Competitions Tobias Hedtstück, if the old system had been maintained, the draw would have taken more than three hours and would have required the use of more than 1,000 balls and 36 drums.
In this way, by manually selecting a ball and randomly matching it with the software, as the draw progresses the possibilities will be reduced and with it the duration, which will remain similar to that of previous years.
The company ‘AeLive’ is the one that provides the software for the draw and, present at the explanatory meeting, assured that it is prepared to repel any cyber attack that could interfere with the draw. A different software will be responsible for the construction of the calendar.
On the subject of fan confidence in a draw that will be almost entirely automatic, Giorgio Marchetti, UEFA Deputy General Secretary and Director of Football, wanted to clear up any doubts on the matter.
“We have hired an external company to do it just to convince the fans,” he said.
UEFA also confirmed that specific match dates and times for the three European competitions will be confirmed on Saturday 31 August. The Champions League draw will take place on the 29th, while the Europa League and Conference League draws will take place on the 30th, all in Monaco.
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2024-08-15 13:22:23
