European football is changing from year to year in the summer, as the European Federation has decided to make cosmopolitan changes that will change the calendar and the structure of all three inter-club competitions as we have known them until today. So, from next year we will see another different Champions League, Europa League and Conference with more teams and more matches in competitions that will resemble a championship and will have nothing to do with what we have known and seen until now.
In particular, UEFA, seeing that in the last group matches of both the Champions League and the Europa and Conference League, there were teams that had either qualified or were eliminated, decided to change the format for the next three years. The two matches remaining in the groups will be the last, as from the new season in the Champions League, a single ranking of 36 teams will be created! There, each team in the first phase will play eight matches, four at home and four away. Depending on the overall harvest, the top eight teams in the standings advance directly to the round of 16 while the teams that have finished from ninth in the table to 24th play each other in a play-off to complete the round of 16 and then the organization continues as it is today.
However, the remaining teams will not continue in a lower European competition, but will be eliminated. The purpose of the Federation is to have interest for all teams until the last matchday where 18 simultaneous matches will be held!
In addition, there will be four groups in the draw as this year but there will be nine groups where each of them will be drawn with two teams from each capacity group. The difference is that now each team will face two teams from the same capacity group they are in. For example, European champions Manchester City will not avoid strong teams from the first group, but will face two of them in the same capacity group and still have two from each group.
Exactly the same format will be in the Europa League, while in the Conference there is a small change, as there will be six groups of six teams and from each group the team will face one and not two as in the Champions League and Europa League.
As can be seen, the matches are increasing, the games will be more, more European teams will participate and for this reason UEFA decided to reduce the matches of the nations league. The goal of UEFA was to stimulate the interest of the fans at the beginning of the competitions, as in the group stage there was not as much interest as in the knockout stage. It remains to be seen in practice whether this venture will succeed and how much it will affect the teams.