File image of Cristiano Ronaldo and Douglas Costa.© X (Twitter)

File image of UEFA Champions League trophy.© AFP

A new era in European club football begins on Thursday when the draw takes place in Monaco for an expanded UEFA Champions League featuring a radically changed format. European football’s governing body is selling what it describes as “a thrilling new future” for the game on the continent with more teams playing more matches, and more prize money on offer. UEFA needs to generate hype around the new format, because there is a risk — in the beginning at least — that fans will find it confusing compared to the old model.

For the last 21 years, the Champions League had consisted of a group stage in which 32 clubs were split into eight groups of four, each playing six games. The top two in each group qualified for the knockout phase.

The new version will feature 36 clubs with everyone playing eight matches, but all teams pooled together into one giant league rather than in groups.

Clubs will still be split into four seeded pots of nine teams, with every participant given two opponents from each pot.

The top eight in the final ranking go through to the last 16, while the next 16 sides advance to an intermediate play-off round and the remainder go out.

The new format was introduced against the backdrop of the threat by Europe’s biggest clubs to break away and form their own Super League.

But UEFA are also hoping the format can be a solution to the problem of competitive imbalance in the sport which was making the group stage more predictable.

“The new format will introduce a better competitive balance between all the teams, with the possibility for each team to play opponents of a similar competitive level throughout the league phase,” UEFA say.

Financial rewards

What the changes will certainly not address are concerns about too much football being played and damaging the quality as a result.

The increasing demands on players, and the lack of rest as a result, were cited as reasons why many matches at Euro 2024 proved disappointing.

The new Champions League, in a season which is also set to finish with the first expanded version of FIFA’s Club World Cup, will feature a total of 144 games in the group stage, up from 96 before.

The financial rewards are greater, however, with UEFA’s total prize pot for the Champions League rising by about 25 percent to almost 2.5 billion euros ($2.79 billion).

The winners of the competition can pocket over 86 million euros just in prize money, not including bonuses of 700,000 euros for every point gained in the league phase or income from television.

Real Madrid were the winners last season, raising the trophy for the sixth time in the last 11 years.

The addition of Kylian Mbappe to their squad means they will hope to go all the way again, and emerge victorious in the final in Munich on May 31, next year.

Newcomers

This season’s Champions League will include newcomers such as Girona from Spain, while Bologna of Italy take part in Europe’s elite club competition for the first time in 60 years.

Brest of France had never qualified for any European competition before, but now take part after finishing third in Ligue 1 last season — taking advantage of the extra place handed to France as the fifth-ranked league in Europe.

As for the other additional places, one goes to a national champion who will emerge from the qualifying rounds, while Italy and Germany get an extra team each because of the performances of their clubs in Europe last season.

UEFA said the draw itself will be a “hybrid” affair, between the manual drawing of balls and the use of software, having calculated that doing it all by hand would take more than three hours.

The Europa League and Conference League, the draws for which will both take place on Friday, will also now feature 36 teams, although there will be only six matches for clubs in the league phase of the latter competition.

In a match that might have been a test of Thiago Motta‘s credentials to take over Juventus, his Bologna team made a blazing start but collapsed at the end and drew 3-3 with the Turin giants on Monday. Former Italy midfielder Motta’s contract with Bologna, where the 41-year-old has been since 2022, expires at the end of the season. His team have been a revelation this season and are already qualified for next season’s Champions League. Monday’s draw preserved third place, ahead of Juventus on tiebreak.

Juventus playing their first match since Massimiliano Allegri was fired following a spectacular tantrum as his team won the Italian Cup last week, started in a daze.

After two minutes, Riccardo Calafiori side-footed into the roof of net as the ball dropped to him in space following a corner.

On 11 minutes, Argentinian Santiago Castro, a 19-year-old making his first Serie A start, headed in at the near post. The only challenge he had to survive was from teenage team-mate Kacper Urbanski, also eager to nod in from close range.

With Juventus seemingly uninterested in running or tackling, unmarked Jens Odgaard then smashed home a 13th-rebound but was deemed offside.

Juventus showed more bite after their half-time encounter with interim coach Paolo Montero, the former Uruguay defender who had been managing the club’s Under-19 team.

With the visitors pressing, Castro pinched the ball in midfield in the 53rd minute and launched a Bologna counter-attack. It finished with centre back Calafiori running in alone on goal and chipping Wojciech Szczesny.

After both coaches made five changes, Bologna imploded in five chaotic minutes.

Federico Chiesa pounced on an error by Jhon Lucumi to pull a goal back for Juventus after 76 minutes. 

Motta had taken off both goalscorers. Montero, it turned out, had sent on two. 

Substitute Arkadiusz Milik added the second for the visitors from a deflected free kick after 83 minutes. A minute later another replacement Kenan Yildiz skipped through the home defence and levelled.

Montero danced in the rain on the touchline.

He is in charge for the last two games of the season.

Motta has been rumoured for weeks to be joining Juve next season, with Allegri’s sacking on Friday only heightening the speculation.

“I haven’t decided, nor signed anything,” Motta told reporters ahead of  Monday night’s game.

“Next week I’ll sit down with the president (Joey Saputo) to take a decision together. Then we will make an announcement together.

Allegri was sent off in the final minutes of last Wednesday’s 1-0 Cup Final win against Atalanta for ranting at match officials and is also alleged to have manhandled threatened the chief editor of newspaper Tuttosport.

The 56-year-old won 12 trophies, including five Serie A titles, and reached two Champions League finals with Juventus over two spells as manager.

Dusan Vlahovic shot Juventus to the Italian Cup with the only goal in Wednesday’s final against Atalanta who were denied a first trophy in six decades. Serbia striker Vlahovic’s fourth-minute strike was enough for Juve to claim the cup for the 15th time in a largely uninspiring final in Rome. Massimiliano Allegri’s side had won just three matches since the end of January coming into the final but frustrated Atalanta from the moment Vlahovic, who also had a goal disallowed for offside in the second half, netted the only goal of the game.

Wednesday’s win ended a three-year trophy drought for Juventus, Italy’s most successful and widely-supported club who have been overshadowed by the Milan clubs and Napoli in recent seasons.

Poor performances this season have led to speculation that Allegri, who was sent off late on, will be sacked in the summer, and he hinted that his second spell as Juve coach is set to come to an end.

“If I’m gone next season, because I’ve already been sacked in the media, we’re in the Champions League and have won a trophy,” said Allegri to Mediaset.

“We’ve done everything we were supposed to do, get into the Champions League and reach a final, the boys did really well to win it.”

Atalanta were fancied to win their first major honour since winning the cup in 1963 after a fabulous season for the traditionally provincial club.

However Gian Piero Gasperini’s team couldn’t find a way through a brilliantly organised Juventus defence which stopped attack-minded Atalanta from having a single shot on target.

The closest Atalanta came to levelling was when Ademola Lookman thumped a shot off the base of the post with 10 minutes remaining.

Atalanta now turn their attentions to sealing Champions League football through Serie A and next week’s Europa League final.

The Bergamo club, who are fifth in Italy’s top flight, face Bayer Leverkusen in Dublin in their first ever European final.

“We were up against a good team who went in front straight way and defended very well. I don’t think we played badly… they didn’t do any more than we did,” said Gasperini.

Allegri sent-off

With fans expecting the Atalanta show Vlahovic put himself forward as chief party pooper when he rushed through to collect Andrea Cambiaso’s pass and smash home his 18th goal of the season.

Vlahovic has been profligate at times this season but his emphatic finish allowed Allegri to play the game he loves best, packing the defence and rebuffing Atalanta’s attacks.

Very little happened in the first half after he scored, largely thanks to Juve’s insistence that nothing happen.

Ademola Lookman went close with a deflected shot five minutes after the break but it was Vlahovic who went close to doubling Juve’s lead in the 65th minute.

The 24-year-old was fed by Federico Chiesa and then skipped past two defenders before his close-range finish was stopped by a combination of Marten de Roon and goalkeeper Marco Carnesecchi.

Vlahovic then thought he had made sure of the cup for Juve with 17 minutes remaining, again meeting a Cambiaso ball to glance in a perfect header, only for the goal to be ruled out for offside.

Lookman then thwacked his effort off the woodwork and soon after Juve midfielder Fabio Miretti rattled the crossbar in one of the game’s few moments of genuine drama.

The match finished with under-pressure Allegri sent off after the coach completely lost his head with referee Fabio Maresca when a foul on Danilo wasn’t immediately given in the area as Atalanta pushed for an equaliser.

Allegri was enraged to the point that he threw his jacket and tie to the floor before ranting at officials pitchside, as Juve directors tried to pull him away, before he returned fully dressed to celebrate cup glory.