The UEFA Champions League draw is set to take place this afternoon (29 August), with UEFA debuting its new system which may land the competition in deep water.
According to the Athletic, Chilean sports consultant Leandro Shara has threatened to sue European football’s governing body. Shara has said that he invented the system and it should be named the “Leandro Shara System”, a format he copyrighted in Chile in 2006.
What is the new system?
In the past, the Champions League featured 32 clubs split into eight groups of four. These groups would be picked by a person/s at the annual draw, with teams placed into different pots depending on their seeding.
The top two teams from each group would progress to the round of 16, while clubs that finished in third place would drop down into the UEFA Europa League, the continent’s second most prestigious club tournament.
However, UEFA has made several changes to its club competitions in a bid to generate more money – a belief held by many stakeholders in football.
Firstly, 2021 saw the launch of a third European club tournament, the UEFA Conference League. European football’s opinion was split ahead of the competition launch, with some welcoming the tournament as a chance to see their club play in Europe and others seeing it as a hindrance to other more traditional and respected competitions.
Nevertheless, since its introduction the tournament has been successful and UEFA has generated extra income, however, maybe not as much as they would like.
Not wanting to create a fourth tournament, the governing body announced it would increase the number of teams playing in each competition from 32 to 36. These 36 clubs will now play in a league system before a knock-out stage, scrapping the traditional group format.
The 36 teams will be split into four seeded pots of nine. Every club will play two teams from each pot, one at home and one away. This means that clubs will each have eight games before the knock-out rounds, compared to the six in the old system.
UEFA’s rising problems
Fans of chess may recognise this format as the ‘Swiss Model’, however, that model involves redrawing the fixtures after each round of matches, pitting winners against one another and crowning the person with the highest aggregate score – an impossibility in cross-border football with a global TV audience.
UEFA’s system is a mix of its old system and the ‘Swiss Model’, a hybrid format that Shara claims to have not only invented but pitched to the governing body numerous times.
In a notice seen by the Athletic, Shara stated that he “presented the format to UEFA over a dozen times since 2013”, sending “case studies” and “documents”. The consultant also says that he has discussed the idea at several sports conferences and worked with football authorities in Chile and Peru on competitions that used the format.
Shara has demanded that UEFA “indicates at the draw and all upcoming publications” that it is his format, invites him and three colleagues from his MatchVision company to attend the draw and lets him speak to the media.
He also demands the governing body tell its member associations and commercial partners that they must respect MatchVision’s ownership of the format and enter into a commercial agreement with MatchVision for the format’s use before the league phases start next month.
These demands must be met by today according to the consultant, as if it fails to “perform the above actions a lawsuit may be commenced against UEFA and the competitions may be jeopardised in one or more countries where UEFA members associations reside”.
So far there has been no update on the situation, although UEFA has faced more scrutiny for other aspects of the new format.
Due to the complexity of the new system, the draw is set to be carried out by artificial intelligence (AI). This has led some people to question the integrity of the draw and even raise concerns that it could be hacked.
Perhaps the most significant criticism this new system has opened UEFA up to is from players and managers because of the increase in matches. Much like FIFA earlier this year, players’ unions have voiced their worries about how adding more games to an already congested calendar will affect their well-being.
However, this is an issue that supporters may see raised over and over again in the future, as clubs, leagues and regional and international tournaments all plan to increase the number of games they play to generate more income.
Despite more games generating more money, there are other avenues available to replicate the same effect, which UEFA has been making use of recently. The governing body announced a title partnership with gambling company Betano for the Europa League and Conference League earlier today.
Additionally, the organisation also named bet365 the title sponsor of the Champions League earlier this month.
