The origins of football lie in the popular, if wild, carnival games of the Middle Ages. The passion and legacy of the game remains intact to this day. Professional competitions and leagues attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world. And if you like sports betting, you can find all the games at Non GamStop betting sites. Here are six of the best soccer leagues.
To illustrate how hotly contested this tournament is, perhaps suffice it to say that since the tournament was reorganized in 2019, only Real Madrid have managed to win in two consecutive years – 2016, 2017 and 2018 to be precise.
Competition Format
Teams that want to play in the prestigious Champions League – after all, the most important annual continental European club football tournament – must either qualify or be confirmed under certain conditions. In fact, qualifying for smaller clubs is not that easy, as most of the 32 places have already been taken.
UEFA uses a coefficient system to decide how many teams from each country advance to the group stage and how many Champions League qualifiers they must go through. Since UEFA considers the leagues of Spain and Great Britain to be the strongest in Europe, these countries are awarded four places, for example.
For a long time there were only four open slots in the Champions League qualification. However, a while ago the European governing body decided to make some changes to the so-called “Evolution” in its flagship tournament. Since the 2018-19 season, there have only been 26 automatically seeded participants in the Champions League group stage, as opposed to 28 seeded teams in previous years.
A new pre-qualification round has also been introduced into the qualification process. There will still be the first, second and third qualifying rounds, which will conclude with a play-off round in which the teams have to make it to the group stage.
Any team eliminated from any stage of the Champions League qualification process will be relegated to the Europa League, in what UEFA calls a “second chance” to allow the team to continue participating in continental football in the current season.
By the way, it can also happen that a team is not allowed to take part in the Champions League even though it would qualify according to sporting criteria. This could happen, for example, to last year’s winners Manchester City, to whom UEFA recently imposed a two-year ban from all European Cup competitions – i.e. Champions League and Europa League – in order to punish years of violations of financial regulations.
Group Stage
A total of 32 teams will fight in the group stage for the 16 places in the knockout phase of the 2020-21 UEFA Champions League. The 32 teams will be divided into eight groups of four, with the restriction that teams from the same association cannot be in a group together.
Clubs receive a minimum of three points if they reach the group stage and receive an additional point if they advance to the quarter-finals, semi-finals or finals. The group stage takes place from mid-September to December.
The group winners and runners-up advance to the round of 16, while the third-placed teams are relegated to the round of 32 of the Europa League.
KO Phase
The round of 16 of the Champions League will take place in February. The knockout phase includes the 16 teams that qualified as winners and runners-up in each of the eight groups in the group phase. The group winners play a home and away game against the runners-up from another group. If there is no clear winner, the team that scores more goals overall in the two games will advance to the next round.
The eight winners of the groups compete against the runners-up, although teams from one group cannot be drawn against each other. The same applies to clubs from the same nation.
In the quarter-final and semi-final draws, teams from the same group or association may be drawn against each other. There is also always a return match. The final will be played in a stadium designated by UEFA. The “home team” is determined by an additional draw that takes place after the semi-final draw.
