The champions of the remaining 43 European leagues will take part in a qualifying competition from which four go into the group stage.
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From 2018/19 season, the top four European leagues – now Spain, Germany, England and Italy – will each be guaranteed four places in the group stage, Uefa competitions director Giorgio Marchetti told reporters.
ESPN FC’s Gab Marcotti expresses his disapproval of the proposed changes to the UEFA Champions League format.
The Champions League is back and it promises to be one of the most exciting seasons ever!
Still, the deal to give 16 guaranteed group-stage places instead of 11 now to clubs from the Spanish, German, English, and Italian leagues will inevitable squeeze teams from lower-ranked leagues.
The new City boss, who won the competition twice with Barcelona during a glittering four-year spell in charge at the Nou Camp, will face his old club in this year’s group stage.
The final details of the changes regarding the entries to the illustrious competitions will be finalised later this year.
Barcelona’s most successful manager, Guardiola guided the Catalan club to Champions League titles in 2009 and 2011, and then took Bayern to the 2015 semi-finals where they lost to Barca.
At present the top three ranked leagues – the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga – each have three clubs qualifying for the group stages with the fourth-placed team in each league going into the play-off round.
The move has been driven in a bid to fight off the threat of a breakaway European Super League by top clubs.
Spain, Germany, and England now have three teams as automatic qualifiers plus one play-off place.
“A new system for the club coefficients: clubs will be judged on their own records (deletion of the country share for individual club coefficient unless that coefficient is lower than 20% of the association’s coefficient)”.
“I will be not fair if I’m not going to mention these two unbelievable players”.
They drop into the Europa League and progress through to the semi-finals where they are beaten 3-1 on aggregate by fellow group stage third placers, Basel. “For this reason we must fight for everything”. Other changes include a new club co-efficient system starting from the beginning of next season and a new system for both seeding and revenue distribution.
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The unluckiest team in the Champions League, certainly from an English point of view, have been cursed again and landed with a group featuring Barcelona, Borussia Monchengladbach and Celtic in this season’s competition.
