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Manchester United could be forced to withdraw from the League Cup within two years in order to play more European games, it was revealed yesterday.
With rumors that a separatist European super league is refusing to die, it appears that UEFA is planning to fight fire with fire and is planning a full overhaul of the Champions League.
This would leave the top teams with more European matches to play, leaving the match schedule too crowded for them to participate in the League Cup and possibly reducing the number of FA Cup replays as well.
According to The timesUEFA will introduce a new ‘Swiss system’ format to European officials over the next two weeks that abolishes the group stage as we know it and replaces it with a 32-team Major League qualification.
Then each team will play against ten other teams, five at home and five away. The draw will be seeded so that each team plays at least two seeds, three from the second and third level and two from below.
The sixteen teams that finished in the top half of the table would proceed to the knockout phase, with the team that finished on top versus the team that finished in 16th place, the team that finished second faced the team that finished in position 15, and so on.
UEFA hopes the new format will respond to calls to see more matches between bigger clubs at an earlier stage in the competition and reduce the number of “nonsense” matches. The fact that the position in the league will determine the strength of a team’s next opponent in the knockout phase should also make almost all results important, while current rules mean that as soon as a team has enough points to qualify of a group, their remaining games are important. dead rubbers.
The new system is expected to take effect in 2024.
Former United chief executive David Gill, now England’s UEFA vice president and treasurer of the European governing body, admitted “there were some” interesting “proposals, but did not want to discuss it further.
In October, it was revealed that many of Europe’s biggest clubs, including United, were planning to split from UEFA and form their own European Super League, and FIFA is not ruling out the idea of supporting it. Covid’s financial effects reportedly led clubs to seek ways in which revenue could increase and play a greater number of games against other major teams, and having rights to broadcast their own matches is an attractive option. .
UEFA hopes its new format will give clubs what they want to keep them happy and defend themselves against the proposed separatist movement.
Whichever team wins, it looks like European football will change radically in the next three years and that United will play teams like Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Benfica far more frequently than against Burnley, Brighton and Bournemouth.
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