With the craziness of the 36-team league phase now over, we look at the data to assess whether the new Champions League format has been a success.
After 36 teams played 144 matches across four months, the league phase of the new-look Champions League came to a goal-laden close on Wednesday.
The new format is a major departure from what we had been accustomed to over the prior 20 years; we’ve now got a massive 36-team league table, two additional fixtures for each club, and sides now facing eight different opponents.
It’s felt exciting and overwhelming in equal measure. That was never more apparent than on the final matchday, which descended into chaos. Sixty-four goals were scored across the 18 simultaneous matches, the second-highest total on a single day in European Cup history (behind the 66 goals scored on 16 September 1970).
But is more of something always a good thing?
Now the dust has settled, let’s examine UEFA’s key promises for the new format and assess whether they held up.
Improving ‘Competitive Balance’
Let’s start with UEFA’s biggest claim, that the new format would lead to “better competitive balance” by ensuring teams face opponents of a “similar level”. And yes, while that is true – every club played against two sides from their own draw pot – they also had to play opponents from every other pot as well.
By definition, the increase in the number of teams inevitably diluted the overall quality of the competition.
That did present itself in a couple of very one-sided games. Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, both from Pot One, beat Pot Three teams Dinamo Zagreb and Celtic by 9-2 and 7-1 scorelines, respectively. There were also big wins for other Pot One sides like Manchester City (5-0 vs Sparta Prague) and Barcelona (5-0 vs Young Boys) against lower-seeded opposition.
Overall, there were 42 games that were decided by 3+ goals in the league phase of this season’s Champions League, which is more than any prior group stage. The next-highest season’s total was 30 games decided by 3+ goals in the group stage of 2022-23.
While more matches naturally create more opportunities for high-scoring wins, the rate of three-goal-plus victories (one every 3.4 games) was the highest since the single-group stage format was introduced in 2003-04.
One trend that also illuminates the lopsidedness of the league phase’s matches was how few draws there were. There were only 18 stalemates in 144 games, the lowest % in any European group stage dating back to 2000-01.
Combining the insights from those two trends, the average match in this season’s league phase was decided by 1.91 goals. That’s an 18.8% increase on the tournament’s historical average in the group stages since 2003-04. Even stripping away games from the 2000s, much of which was dominated by low-scoring football, it’s still a 13.6% increase from group-stage games since 2010-11.
While individual upsets did occur, the teams that qualified remained fairly true to form. Of the top 24 teams in the Opta Power Rankings entering the tournament, only five failed to qualify. The biggest shock was RB Leipzig, ranked 11th pre-tournament, crashing out in 32nd place.
The six lowest-ranked teams in the Opta Power Rankings were all eliminated at the first hurdle (Slovan Bratislava, Young Boys, Shakhtar Donetsk, Crvena zvezda, Dinamo Zagreb and Sturm Graz) as well as seven of the lowest nine (add Salzburg in there too).
That’s not to say there weren’t success stories. Brest (ranked 60th) and Celtic (58th) defied their Opta Power Ranking and pre-tournament seedings to advance.
But overall, it’s hard to argue that competitive balance improved. If anything, the gap between elite teams and the rest widened.
‘Every Game Counts’
UEFA also claimed the new format would ensure every match has the potential to significantly impact a team’s final standing. “Every game counts” was their precise wording.
On the one hand, only two games on Matchday 8 were true dead rubbers: Young Boys (36th) vs Crvena zvezda (32nd) and Sturm Graz (33rd) vs RB Leipzig (30th). Everyone else had something to play for, even if that meant just jostling for position. Taken in isolation, that is an obvious selling point for this format.
On the other hand, nine teams had already been eliminated going into the final matchday, with Shakhtar Donetsk also realistically out, needing to beat Dortmund and benefit from an improbable five-goal swing to qualify.
With 24 of the 36 teams advancing, genuine jeopardy was rare. Manchester City’s qualification saga provided some drama, as did Stuttgart’s battle to qualify. But in the end, City qualified quite comfortably despite having a dismal league phase that included a run of three defeats in four games (D1). Even with that, all they needed was to beat Club Brugge at home on the final day to qualify.
Their three wins came in games against Sparta Prague (35th), Slovan Bratislava (31th) and Club Brugge (24th). That was enough to see them qualify.
City were one of five sides who qualified despite winning less than half of their league-phase matches, along with Juventus, Celtic, Sporting CP and Club Brugge. When so many teams qualify, the threshold for progression naturally drops, and that can reduce the importance of individual games.
This isn’t an entirely new issue, though. Even in the old format, group-stage strolls were common.
Since 2003-04, when the format moved to a 16-team knockout round instead of a second group stage, 52 sides progressed to the last 16 while winning less than half their games in the group stage – an average of two per season. This year we had five.
It’s also a lot rarer for a team of the calibre of City to be in this situation. Since 2003-04, just 10 previous winners of the Champions League have won under half their games in a group stage and qualified for the knockouts.
City may be ‘punished’ by a tough tie against Bayern or Real Madrid in the next round due to their lower seeding, but this is more a reflection of those teams underperforming too rather than the system itself.
‘More Variety’ in Opponents
The expanded format introduced fresh matchups, with Aston Villa, Bologna, Brest, Girona and Slovan Bratislava all making their Champions League debuts. Add to that the fact that teams faced eight unique opponents instead of the traditional home-and-away fixtures, we saw an unprecedented level of variety.
In fact, 98 of the 144 fixtures (68%) this season were first-time meetings in the Champions League, far exceeding the previous record of 71 (45.2%) set over the full 1999-00 campaign, not just the group stages.
The new format undoubtedly brought fresh encounters and increased the frequency of high-profile clashes earlier in the tournament.
While the new format succeeded in delivering variety and high-scoring drama, it has also arguably intensified the competitive disparity and lessened the stakes of individual matches.
It remains to be seen how negative the impact will be for sides finishing ninth to 24th, as they prepare to play two extra games before reaching the last 16. And that’s on top of the two extra ones they had to play in the group stage. There’s an argument that if those extra games contribute to players being unable to perform at their best in the latter stages of the tournament, the value of a top-eight finish will be higher. That could lead to more jeopardy in future league phases.
Overall, despite the inclusion of four extra sides and 48 more fixtures, just 12 clubs have actually dropped out of the competition. And we’ve got another 16 games to go before we reach the last 16.
As we said, more of something is not always a good thing.
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