What is the Champions League?

Jason

Introduction

The Champions League is the elite club competition in Europe that features the leading teams from the major domestic leagues across Europe. There are similar competitions across the other FIFA confederations – Asia, Africa, South America, North America, Central America, and the Caribbean – but none has the same status as the Champions League.

It was first contested in 1956 when it was known as the European Cup, at a time when just the teams who had won their domestic leagues were eligible to play in it 

And over time, the competition has evolved to include more elite teams and has become the most watched and lucrative club competition in the world. It is the tournament that all the hottest stars want to play in, not only from Europe, but from all across the world.

In the 2024 – 2025 season, it will expand further with an additional number of teams playing in the group stages.

The Champions League has a global TV audience of hundreds of millions every year. And while the teams do receive a share from the TV revenues, they also win significant prize money just for reaching the various stages of the tournament.

Qualification to the Champions League

Although the original rule was that only one team per country was allowed to play in the tournament, this was changed to allow multiple entries from the stronger leagues across Europe.

That is because the standard of club football in certain countries is much higher than in others, and denying some of the teams from strong counties that did not win their domestic league the chance to play in the tournament would damage its competitiveness.

Chelsea, for example, only finished third in the Premier League in the 2018 – 2019 season, but they still went on to win the Champions League the following season. 

Traditionally the five biggest leagues in Europe are in:

  1. England – Premier League
  2. Italy – Serie A
  3. Spain – La Liga
  4. Germany – Bundesliga
  5. France – Ligue 1

How many teams from each country that are eligible to take part in the Champions League is determined by their UEFA (European football) coefficient ranking. This assesses the strength of a league by the performance of their club teams over a period of several years in European competitions. The higher the ranking of the domestic league, the more places it is offered in the Champions League.

Weaker domestic leagues may only be offered one or two places, or may have to enter qualifying rounds first.

This can be illustrated by the 32 teams that are featured in the group stage of the 2022 – 2023 season. England, Spain, Italy, and Germany each have four representatives, Portugal three, and France and Scotland have two apiece.  And then there is one team from the Netherlands, Austria, the Ukraine, Croatia, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Israel.

Domestic Leagues Calendars

Every country in Europe will have its own league systems, run by their national football associations, although they are all affiliated with UEFA. While leagues do not all run on the exact same schedule, there is a great deal of harmonization among the domestic football calendars to ensure that there is time allowed for international competitions like the Champions League and the World Cup.

With some flexibility, most domestic leagues will begin in August and continue through to the following May or early June. They have most of the summer off. There are exceptions in countries like Russia and Scandinavia though, where climate conditions do not permit games to be played in the dead of winter.

And a number of countries also have a winter break to allow players a period of rest and recuperation. These leagues’ seasons may be extended to accommodate this.

Champions League Calendar

The Champions League, to a large extent, follows the same timetable as domestic league seasons.

This is important to understand. The Champions League and domestic leagues play at the same time. Domestic competitions are played on the weekends, while the Champions League plays on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So the elite teams that play in the Champions League also play in their own domestic leagues at the same time. Note that the teams in the Champions League are based on who the domestic league winners were from the prior season.

The Champions League begins in late June with the play-in rounds. This is for teams who don’t have automatic entry into the tournament and need to win their way into the group stages, which begin in September and mark the official start of the tournament.

The teams that must participate in the play-in rounds include:

  • Domestic champions of leagues that are not one of the top 10 leagues based on the UEFA ranking coefficient
  • The 1st, second, and third runners-up from the top 10 domestic leagues

Champions League Format of Play

The Champions League is played in two stages: the group stage (32 teams), and the knock-out stage (16 teams).

The Group Stage

In the group stage, the 32 teams are split into eight groups of four teams, which are determined by a seeded draw. This means the best teams are placed into groups so that they don’t meet until later in the competition.

Each team will play the other three teams in their group on a round-robin basis, home and away, with three points for a win and one for a draw.

The top two teams in each group will advance to the knock-out stage of the competition, while the third-placed teams will drop down into the secondary European tournament, the Europa Cup. The fourth team is eliminated completely.

The group phase will normally be completed by December, but this year, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has compressed this timetable, and it will be concluded a month earlier in November.

The Knock-Out Phase

The knock-out phase will usually begin in the February of the following year, with the round of 16. At this stage of the tournament, the only rule is that teams from the same country cannot be drawn against each other in the first round. However, this rule does not apply to the quarter-final stages and onwards.

Each knock-out round prior to the finals is played in a two-legged format, which means each team plays once at home and once away, and the winner is determined by the aggregate score, the sum of the scores of the two legs. 

The number of teams is then whittled down until there are two finalists left.

The Finals

The final itself is usually played in late May at a pre-determined location. The location of the finals is awarded to cities several years in advance and is usually coveted because it not only confers prestige to hold a Champions League final, but it can also give a large economic boost to local economies.

The 2023 final, for example, will take place in Istanbul, Turkey.

Fans of the competing clubs are often unhappy about the number of tickets they receive for the finals because so many are given to commercial partners of UEFA. And there have been cases where there have been two teams from the same country in the final – England, Italy, Spain, and Germany – and they have still been expected to travel hundreds of miles if they want to see the game.

The Most Successful Team

The most successful team in the history of the competition is Real Madrid of Spain. They have won it 14 times, monopolizing the competition in the early years. They are also the defending champions as well, having beaten Liverpool in last season’s final. 

They are followed by AC Milan of Italy, and Bayern Munich and Liverpool of England. Other multiple winners include such famous club names as Barcelona, Ajax, Benfica, Manchester United, and Inter Milan.

The Strongest Sides Do Not Always Win

Assembling a team of superstars is no guarantee of success in football if they fail to work as a team. Take for example the French champions, Paris Saint-Germain, who are bankrolled by wealthy Qatari owners, and have assembled a side full of stars like Neymar, Lionel Messi, and Kylian Mbappé. Despite the strength of their roster, they have never won the trophy, have just one final appearance to their name, and have a history of being knocked out in the early knock-out stages.

Similarly, English club Manchester City, who have rich Arab owners themselves, have never managed to get beyond the semi-finals of the competition.

Contrast that to Real Madrid, for whom winning the tournament seems to be in their DNA. They managed to beat both PSG and City en route to winning the championship again last season.

The Best European Players

Some of the best players in the league include:

  • England’s Premier League
    • Spurs
      • Harry Kane (from England)
    • Manchester City
      • Phil Foden (from England)
      • Bernardo Silva (from Portugal)
      • Erling Haaland (from Norway), who moved to City from German’s Dortmund club in the summer, is already tipped by many to become the leading scorer in the Champions League.
    • Liverpool
      • Diego Jota (from Portugal)
  • Italy’s Serie A
    • Juventus
      • Paul Pogba (from France)
  • Spain’s La Liga
    • Real Madrid
      • Kylian Mbappé (from France)
      • Karim Benzema (from France)
    • Atlético Madrid
      • João Felix (from Portugal)
  • Germany’s Bundesliga
    • Borussia Dortmund
      • Jude Bellingham (from England)

These are just 10 of them. But it is not just Europeans who will play in the league. Nearly all the teams playing in the Champions League will have their fair share of African and South American imports, along with a smattering of players from other continents.

Playing in the Champions League represents the pinnacle when it comes to club football, not just in Europe, but globally as well.

By Shantanu