A competition format used in chess and known as the "Swiss model" will be introduced for this season's Uefa Champions League football tournament.
In the new-look draw, to be held in Monaco this evening, clubs will discover which eight opponents they will meet in the initial stage of this year's competition.
But the format has already proven controversial before a ball is kicked: some say the "high-stakes experiment" offers "more excitement", said Nick Ames in The Guardian, but others "feel it serves the interests of Super League rebels".
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A brave new world
Announcing the new system, Uefa said that European football is "one of the world's most successful and popular sports" because "it never stands still". Since its launch as the European Cup in 1955, the tournament has "continuously evolved and adapted" to "keep pace with wider changes in the game".
Between 1955 and 1991 it had a simple knockout format, contested by one club per country (the league champions) and the tournament's defending champions. A group phase was introduced in 1991, and the competition was rebranded as the Champions League the following year. Multiple national representatives were allowed from 1998. A second group stage was tried between 1999 and 2003.
From this season, there will be a new format, known as the "Swiss model", which has been used in chess, croquet, bridge and Scrabble. The Champions League group stage will be replaced by a league structure and the number of clubs has been increased from 32 to 36.
Every club will play a minimum of eight league stage games against eight different opponents (four home games, four away). To determine the eight opponents, the teams will initially be ranked in four seeding pots for this evening's draw.
Clubs that finish the league phase in first to eighth places will automatically go on to the 16-club knockout phase, and the clubs that finish in ninth to 24th places will enter a two-legged play-off, with the winners proceeding to the 16-club knockout.
But the clubs that finish in 25th place or lower will be eliminated from the competition, with no access to the UEFA Europa League as a consolation, as has happened in recent years.
More big-ticket games but less jeopardy
The president of Uefa, Aleksander Ceferin, said the new format, also in force for the Europa and Conference Leagues, will mean "greater fairness, excitement, intensity, emotion and uncertainty".
But it's fair to say it has plenty of detractors. Football's "greatest virtue is its simplicity", said Miguel Delaney in The Independent, but that "certainly isn't how you'd describe this new Champions League", which is "in essence, almost a full European season now running alongside the domestic season".
It "looks a lot" like the big clubs "got what they wanted in a very roundabout way", which is "more games against each other, and a greater likelihood of constantly qualifying". Wide-scale changes like this "alter the psychological architecture of the sport" and "you're not really watching what you know any more".
Perhaps "big-ticket games" will "throw up enough thrillers" to "cast any fresh fears of a Super League into distant memory", said Ames. But "the wisdom" of playing 144 games in order to eliminate 12 teams "may prove wobbly".
"Boredom" is guaranteed, said Thom Gibbs in The Telegraph, as "qualifiers are settled long before the eighth round of fixtures". There will be complaints about scheduling as soon as clubs are "forced to play a domestic game at an inconvenient time" and the League Cup will face "inevitable" death.
"All for what?" he asked – a "witless expansion which looks alarmingly like the Super League entering via the backdoor, surrounded by bouncers".
Meanwhile, The Athletic said that Leandro Shara, a Chilean sports consultant, has threatened to sue Uefa for the "unauthorised and unfair use" of the format, which he claims he invented. He argued that it should be called the "Leandro Shara System", a set-up he copyrighted in Chile in 2006.
