European football’s governing body UEFA, met today at their headquarters in Nyon to finalise changes to both the Champions League and the Europa League which will all come in to effect in 2018.
Champions League changes:
As previously proposed, the top four clubs from the top four ranked nations will now all gain automatic qualification to the Champions League group stage.
Kick off times have also been changed from the traditional 20:45CET time. Instead of 8 fixtures being played out each night at the same time, 2 fixtures will now be played at 19:00CET while the remaining six will be played at 21:00CET.
The co-efficient system is also seeing changes. UEFA will now base seeding off of the past five years performances in the competitions (editors note: This isn’t the last five participation’s in either European competition.) Furthermore, clubs rankings will no longer be boosted by past titles as UEFA have scrapped it.
Financially however, UEFA will include bonus points for past titles. The points system works as follows: 12 points for a UCL win in past 5 years, 8 points for each UCL win since the competitions debut in 1992 and 4 points for wins before then. Points will also be handed out for Europa League wins and for wins of the defunct Cup Winners Cup.
Europa League changes:
Qualification has been made easier for Europe’s second best continental competition, particularly for the champions of nations lower in the UEFA rankings. All champions knocked out in any UCL qualification stage will be given a “second chance” by being placed in a “dedicated champions path” in the Europa League qualifying rounds.
Source: UEFA.com