UEFA Planning New Tournament Featuring The Champions League Winner Despite Fixture Congestion Fears
UEFA is reportedly planning a new tournament in the United States that will include the winner of the Champions League.
According to L'Equipe, European football's governing body is exploring plans to hold a mini-tournament featuring the Champions League winner and three other leading teams.
The competition would have two semi-finals and a final and could take place in August before the start of the Champions League – with the United States pencilled in as a potential host nation.
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French publication L'Equipe claim UEFA first proposed the idea to broadcasters when they were bidding for the right to televise the Champions League from 2024 to 2027.
The idea of playing extra European games outside of the continent during an already-packed football calendar is likely to be controversial.
The Union of Professional Footballers in France (UNFP) has already criticised the plans, amid fears the football calendar is already at breaking point.
"The European body only wants to line its pockets with no regard for the health of the players, and with no regard for the spectacle of football," the UNFP said in a statement, as reported by the Daily Mail.
UEFA president Alexander Ceferin has previously suggested the UEFA Super Cup match between the winners of the Champions League and UEFA Cup could be expanded to a four-team competition, as happened with the Spanish Super Cup in 2019.
"That is a possibility, for sure. Now, who will play exactly we cannot tell for sure yet," said Ceferin.
"This is one of the ideas that we will do something more with that at the beginning of the season, or before the start of the season."
Clubs in the Champions League are already set to play two extra matches from the start of the 2024-25 season, when the number of teams competing in the competition will rise from 32 to 36.
The current format, which sees teams divided up into eight groups of four, will be replaced by a league phase known as the 'Swiss model' which contains all 36 teams.
Instead of playing three opponents twice, home and away, clubs will play eight different teams, half of them at home and half of them away.
The top eight sides in the league will then qualify automatically for the knockout stage of the competition.
The change of format means there will be 189 matches played across the course of the Champions League campaign, compared to 125 under the current system.
Topics: Champions League, Football, UEFA, UEFA Super Cup
Rory O'Callaghan