Exclusive: New Champions League format will change again

UEFA have recently announced changes to the format of the Champions League, though they are much the same as what was proposed by a breakaway European Super League.

The clubs who signed up to the ESL but then quickly withdrew have ended up with something that will perhaps work better than the current group stage scenario, however, UEFA will still retain a stranglehold over them.

It will be interesting to watch over the first couple of seasons to see if the excitement and standards that are promised are in fact delivered.

Outgoing UEFA president, Aleksander Ceferin will have to oversee the transition, and though he won’t be around to monitor the competition moving forward, he will certainly be taking a keen interest given that he was responsible for getting agreement on the changes.

“There were always going to be some changes to the Champions League and things will evolve, particularly with Ceferin leaving,” former super agent and co-creator of the Premier League, Jon Smith, said for his exclusive CaughtOffside column.

“This particular iteration of the competition has been flagged for the last 12 to 18 months so I don’t think the Super League has had a great deal of influence here because it was going this way anyway.

“There will be other changes too because I think the Saudis will have conversations with FIFA which will ultimately – and this is just a forecast by me – change up the World Club Championship which nobody understands or doesn’t seem to want anywhere.

“Those dates are fixed in the calendar and I think there’s a reasonable chance that some sort of evolving Super League under FIFA’s banner will evolve over the next 24/36 months.”

Given that Smith still has his finger on the pulse in terms of what’s happening on Planet Football, the knowledge that the Saudis could begin to influence whether long-standing European competitions fall by the wayside or not is a worrying development.

In their stampede for change, Premier League clubs might just have picked the wrong option.