Champions League is one of the biggest soccer competitions in the world. Winning it doesn’t just give you bragging rights over your cross-town rivals or country; it crowns you as the best club in Europe. It takes more than top talent to win, though. It also takes heart, and a bit of luck.
The 2024-25 season marks the beginning of a new format for Champions League, one that aims to strengthen the synergy between the league phase and the knockout rounds. The league phase rankings will now determine and lay out the bracket for the knockout round of sixteen.
From there, the remaining thirty-two teams will be divided into eight groups of four clubs each. The randomized draw will restrict placing two teams from the same national league in the same group and use a coefficient-based seeding system to create competitive balance within each of the groups. Each team will play its fellow clubs in the group twice: once at home and once away, earning three points for a win and one point for a draw.
Those teams that finish ninth through 16th will be seeded in the knockout play-off draw and will face a team that is ranked between 17th and 24th. The two winners of those play-off ties will then join the final group of 16 clubs that were seeded. Unlike past seasons, which saw country protection in place until the quarterfinals, there will no longer be any protected groups for the knockout round of 16. This means that a team like Liverpool could potentially be drawn against Chelsea.