DRAFT UEFA proposals leaked into the public domain last night which would see 24 of the 32 Champions League entrants into the group stages from 2024 onwards qualify automatically for the following year’s competition regardless of their domestic league placing.
Surely the first step towards a much-trailed bona fide European Super League, according to a document revealed by the Associated Press, each group would now comprise eight teams rather than four, with every team guaranteed at least 14 games rather than six, enough to earn them additional tens of millions of pounds.
As for the remaining members of this 32, four of the remaining eight spots would come from the four semi-finalists from the Europa League, leaving just four slots for champion sides from their domestic leagues on the continent.
The current 16-team knockout stage will also be retained, with the bottom two teams in every eight-team group effectively ‘relegated’ out of the competition.
While current Scottish champions Celtic would retain their spot in the group stages if the plans had come into force this season by dint of finishing third in their group, the plans clearly have major ramifications for Scottish teams.
If you were to continue this year’s parallel onto this year’s model, the proposal would allow for Arsenal and Chelsea to gain ‘promotion’ via the Europa League route to take England’s quotient of Champions League teams to six, an amount which could quite easily continue for perpetuity.
The Spanish and German leagues would gain a further team too, leaving Scotland’s champions – whoever they are – likely to be left battling it out either with the remainder of the continent’s domestic champions or requiring to reach the last four of the Europa League just to access the Champions League.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel