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    Home » What You Need to Know About the UEFA Champions League 2024/25: Format, Teams, Draw
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    What You Need to Know About the UEFA Champions League 2024/25: Format, Teams, Draw

    Oki Bin OkiBy Oki Bin OkiSeptember 19, 2024No Comments6 Mins Read
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    The Champions League is frequently considered the most elite football tournament in the world and it’s watched by millions around the world. The Champions League final averages around 400 million viewers each year. That’stwice as much as the Super Bowl, so it’s no surprise that so many people choose to bet online at GGBET! According to UEFA, part of the reason that the Champions League is so successful is its refusal to stand still and continuously adapt, change, and improve. With that in mind, this year sees the first major format change to the UEFA Champions League since 2003. With a new format, more teams, and hopefully more excitement, this year’s Champions League gets underway on Tuesday 17th September.

    Here’s everything you need to know.

    Table of Contents

    Toggle
    • Format
    • Teams
    • Draw
    • Key Teams to Watch
    • Important Dates and Schedule
    • Betting on the UEFA Champions League 2024/25

    Format

    In recent years, the Champions League has consisted of 32 teams across 8 groups of 4, before proceeding to a two-leg knockout competition until a final is played at a neutral ground.

    This year though, the first half of the tournament is going to look more like an actual league.

    After conducting extensive consultation with the key European football stakeholders, the new format will consist of 36 competing clubs that collectively participate in a single league competition.

    It’s a bit more complicated than that though, clearly, each club has its own domestic leagues that they participate in over the season so UEFA has instead introduced a format whereby each team will initially play 8 teams once (4 at home, 4 away) and their points that they accumulate across these 8 matches will be compared to every team in the 36 leagues.

    Once these 8 games have come to a climax, the league will be separated into 3 segments:

    • Teams 1st-8th automatically qualify for the last 16 knockout stages of the tournament (2-tie matches until a 1-leg final in a neutral venue).
    • Teams 9th to 24th meanwhile will compete in play-offs (across two legs) to make up the rest of the last 16, and teams 25th to 36th are eliminated from the tournament entirely.
    • What this means is that there should be fewer dead rubbers and that almost every team has something to play for until the end of the league phase.

    Teams

    This year’s UEFA Champions League will see some familiar giants of European football, as well as a few newer teams with the addition of 4 extra teams.

    Places for the tournament have been decided on a European coefficient ranking system which UEFA devises and comprises the following teams:

    England:

    • Arsenal
    • Aston Villa
    • Liverpool
    • Manchester City

    Spain:

    • Atletico Madrid
    • Barcelona
    • Girona
    • Real Madrid

    Italy:

    • Atalanta
    • Bologna
    • Inter
    • Juventus
    • AC Milan

    Germany:

    • Borussia Dortmund
    • Bayern Munich
    • Leipzig
    • Leverkusen
    • Stuttgart

    Portugal:

    • Benfica
    • Sporting Lisbon

    France:

    • Brest
    • Lille
    • Monaco
    • Paris Saint Germain

    Scotland:

    • Celtic

    Belgium:

    • Club Brugge

    Netherlands:

    • Feyenoord
    • PSV Eindhoven

    Slovakia:

    • Bratislava

    Austria:

    • Salzburg
    • Sturm Graz

    Serbia:

    • Crvena Zvezda

    Croatia:

    • GNK Dinamo

    Ukraine:

    • Shakhtar

    Czechia:

    • Sparta Prague

    Switzerland:

    • Young Boys

    Draw

    On 29th August, the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 draw took place at the glitzy Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.

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    However, due to the new format and the extension of fixtures, it wasn’t feasible to manually draw every single team like in previous years.

    Additionally, the fixtures of the initial league phase have two restrictions:

    1. A team cannot be drawn against a team from their own association (i.e. Arsenal can’t play Manchester City)
    2. A team can’t be drawn against two teams from the same association (i.e. Arsenal can’t be drawn against Borussia Dortmund AND Bayern Munich)

    The number of permutations therefore meant that having a person physically pick balls to determine the draw would take an extremely long time so it was decided that this year’s draw would combine a human selecting the first 8 teams from pot 1 (the highest ranked teams in the competition), and then a computer would choose the 8 teams that they in turn would play against.

    Gianluigi Buffon chose these initial 8 teams from Pot 1 in Monaco, and then Ronaldo pressed a magic button to inform the rest of the teams that the Pot 1 teams would play against.

    If this sounds complicated, it is! But what this means is that we will see more matches, more incentives, and hopefully more excitement!

    Key Teams to Watch

    Last year’s winners Manchester City are currently the bookmaker’s favorites to win back-to-back Champions Leagues with some bookmakers putting them as evens to win the whole thing. Haaland is still scoring for fun and you’d certainly fancy their chances of doing it.

    Real Madrid meanwhile isn’t too far behind and their star-studded attacking force of Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappe, and Vinicius Junior will be a threat against even the most organized defenses this season.

    The market gets a little unsure after these two with Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, and Barcelona making up the 3rd to 6th favorites with very little between them in terms of outright odds to win the Champions League.

    At the bottom end, Slovan Bratislava, Crvena Zvezda, Sparta Prague, and Dinamo Zagreb are expected to struggle, but with the new format, anything is possible!

    Important Dates and Schedule

    Matchday 1 games get underway on Tuesday 17th-19th September with the rest of the league phase matches taking place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays:

    • Matchday 2: 1/2 October 2024
    • Matchday 3: 22/23 October 2024
    • Matchday 4: 5/6 November 2024
    • Matchday 5: 26/27 November 2024
    • Matchday 6: 10/11 December 2024
    • Matchday 7: 21/22 January 2025
    • Matchday 8: 29 January 2025

    The knockout round play-offs (for teams who finish 9th to 28th) take place on 11th-12th February, and 18th-19th February 2025.

    • Last 16 games: 4/5 & 11/12 March 2025
    • Quarter-finals: 8/9 & 15/16 April 2025
    • Semi-finals: 29/30 April & 6/7 May 2025

    The final of the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 will culminate on 31 May 2025 at the Munich Football Arena.

    Betting on the UEFA Champions League 2024/25

    The UEFA Champions League could be more exhilarating than ever and with more matches, and more top-tier teams facing each other from the start of the tournament, betting online at GGBet presents the opportunity to dial up the excitement even more.

    Email your news TIPS to Editor@kahawatungu.com or WhatsApp +254707482874

    Email your news TIPS to Editor@kahawatungu.com or WhatsApp +254707482874

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    Oki Bin Oki

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