Boring, boring Madrid.
Horrible
Poor keeper, he got a hand on the shotā¦
Well, thank goodness I completely forgot about this.
Wembley and crowd trouble.
Find me a better combination.
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Just saw the draw to this seasons champions league
Iāve no idea whatās going on to be honest both city and arsenal are playing PSG but arenāt playing each other?
Iāll wait for the knockout phase I think
Starting on the 2024ā25 season, UEFA changed the format of their 3 club competitions,[83] abandoning the group stage and adopting a league stage. Alongside with this change, the number of participating teams was increased from 32 to 36 teams. Teams are no longer divided into groups of 4 teams each but are ranked in a unique table. Each team plays 8 matches against 8 different opponents. For the draw of the league stage, teams are divided in 4 seeding pots according with their UEFA coefficient. Each team will play against two teams from each pot, one away and one home.
So my interpretation is that we have one table for all 36 teams, but each team only plays eight of them (two from each of the four pots). If you finish in the top eight, you go straight to the knockout phase. If you finish 9th-24th, you go into a two-leg preliminary knockout phase to reach the knockout phase.
Sounds simple, doesnāt it? 
So itās kinda just like how the ACL format has changed.
It sounds like a mess but from the look of it, has thrown up a really nice mix of games - for every club really. Iāve never properly been a fan of 4 team groups despite them being a part of football since forever. With such a small set of teams, thereās too much change of dud groups, never mind the increased likelihood of dead rubbers.
Iām interested to see how it all pans out.
As far as I can tell, youāre sort of right. The only difference is that the AFC splits into East and West sections.
I get the feeling this draw will heavily reduce FOMO for the big clubs to reach the round of 16. Thereās no chance they can get drawn into a group of death anymore. Even if they have an average group stage, they can still qualify for the preliminary knockouts. Good chance they will draw an opponent they can beat in that instance, and off they go.
I really feel this change is built with the big clubs in mind. Nothing more, nothing less.
Surely itās built with only dollars in mind, getting 8 games out of all teams instead of 6.
Tournament football is dead.
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And more dollars will also happen if the big clubs are getting through to the latter stages every time. It might just make that breakaway league concept a bit less enticing, as well.
the draw was bizarre with Ronaldo pushing a button to start an algorithm
Nothing like getting a guy whoās team isnāt elegible for the competition to fly over just to press a buttonā¦
Ronaldo probably kept demanding he be the button presser until UEFA caved in.
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I can just see the socials full of CR7 simps raving about how he pressed that button better than Messi could ever dream of.
One thing Iāve kinda been thinking about all day is, if theyāre already using this weird algorithmic model with one giant group, why not simply move to an actual Swiss system?
Then you could fuck off the qualification system entirely, pull in all of the champions from all of the countries, have many more teams/countries/audiences involved, and have many more competitive balanced games.
The mock run through without using a computer apparently took them 3 hours. So they had to rethink and use a computer for most of it
They should have just used football manager.
Takes about 10 seconds
In a proper Swiss system you donāt set the fixtures for the next round until the previous round is completed, which just isnāt feasible from a scheduling perspective.