The UEFA Champions League is back with Matchday 8 action, and our crew is taking a look at all of the squads that will be vying for a spot in the top 24 to secure their spot in the knockout rounds. Join Claudia Pagan, Chris Wittyngham, Tony Meola & Geoff Shreeves as they preview the week’s UCL match ups, chatting about the differences between the League Phase & the pre-2024 format with a Group Stage.
0:00 UCL Matchday 8 FIXTURES
0:32 UCL League Phase Table
0:51 UCL Tiebreaker rules
1:17 League Phase vs Group Stage
6:47 How to balance Europe in UCL
8:11 Premier League dominance
10:56 Watch More!
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The English sold their clubs to billionaires and made them their toys. DISGUSTING. Spanish cup finals in Saudi Arabia 🤮
No no no, thank you. Germany stays strong and German clubs remain member-owned
Love love CBS God bless 🙏🏻🙏🏻❤️
how can he say pl dominance is deserved when they just get creamed by international company´s
This format is far better. Nobody even cared about the UCL until the R16. This is actually interesting.
New format is just better in every way possible, its not perfect. BUt its way better then the old garbage format
I think the English teams are so dominant this year in the UCL because they have played many of the crucial games at home. When the K/O stages started last year it was a whole different ballmgame.
Keep the format but make it 1 through 16 and no playoffs.
I like seeing big matchups each matchday which you didnt get in the group stage format. You can say there aren't consequences but we could see a team like Napoli eliminated this week and last year several big clubs didnt qualify til the last matchday. I would like there only being 16 teams to qualify for KO Round instead of 24.
swiss model sucks!!!
Italy, France, Germany and Spain have a league and a domestic cup and then plays in UEFA competitions.
England has a league, FA CUP and a CARABAO CUP while also playing UEFA competitions.
CARABAO is another reason premier league clubs that play in European competitions have too many games.
There is no doubt that Carabao contributes to the December fixture congestion while Spain, France and Germany are on a Christmas break.
Arsenal, Chelsea, Newcastle and Man City are playing Carabao semi finals. These teams are still in FA CUP, UCL and league race at the same time and not even one pundit or fan from England is raising that as a contributing factor to poor performance in UCL final stages.
Instead, the dominant narrative in England has changed from saying PSG is failing to win UCL because they are not used to competitive opponents in ligue 1 so they get shocked by quality opponents in UCL final stages… to now say premier league is competitive and doesn't allow clubs to rest players like in other leagues("Farmer's leagues").
So the reason actually changes depending on how English teams perform at the time. But English FA will not take responsibility for the extra useless CARABAO competition.
I prefer this format compared to the previous format
The previous format was just too predictable for me.
I don’t know what these people are saying
This format seems fair for both bigger and smaller teams
The only thing you can argue is thst the amount of games will take a lot from the players and will cause injuries but then managers should be able to rotate and manage their squads better.
The Premier league will definitely start dominating Europa and the conference league because the gap is soo wide. Atleast in the CL a handful of teams have enough to compete for the moment atleast 😮💨😮💨
Could smell the arrogance from that Englishman from Atlanta
That format is great but they should’ve kept 6 games like is in the Conference League.
8 is a bit too long, but the format is excellent.
Manschester City 1-3 Galatasaray Istanbul
The new format isn't exactly forgiving like said.its actually very troubling if a team like barca finish 9th ..the playoff could be considered as a filter for the true knockout and if a team in the lower table beat the 9th team they are eliminated..that allows for the small teams a chance to get to round of 16..the old format got boring in group stage and that was obvious.Only the top 8 are in the knockouts proper..that extra playoff game seems like Conclusion of the league phase.
Have you seen the big 6 games this year in the premier league snoozefest after snoozefest, super league without english clubs would actually be fun
To answer Tonys question, I wouldn't like to see the same matchup twice in a league phase. It's a league phase not knockouts
“Successful product”. I’m tired of people saying that the prem is a model of success when their local clubs are being scooped up as investmet vehicles by hedge funds, oligarchs and sovereign wealth funds. That’s a problem, not success. Get it together and stop trying to export this rot.
Barca TV 2
Depends on how far in the competition a player and club goes, and you play it by winning games, the table can still shift on match day 8.
Complain Complain…that's the only journalists do….
My only gripe with the new format is that it should have been tried out first with 32 teams.too many games are draining these players.
With the old format, by the end of the fifth round of group stage games, we knew about 90% of the teams that were going through to the next phase, resulting in dead rubbers aplenty. Now, any 6 teams from 3rd down to 18th could go straight through to the next phase and we don't know who they could be. That's got to be better.
The new format is way better for both fans and the competition. All clubs are now guaranteed more teams to play which is way more exciting for the fans. Imagine if it was the old groupstage format and Kairat would have been stuck with only 3 other teams and then you are out. It also gives smaller teams a much greater chance at survival being able to perform consistently against a lot of different teams. Qarabag now has a very good chance of making it to the playoffs, but how likely would advancement have been for them in the old group stage?
All REAL fans love the new format! COYG ❤ AFC