Cristiano Ronaldo contributed to the design of the Champions League’s new format, which made for an exciting day in Monaco. We now know the dates of the games, with certain English teams facing more difficult paths than others. On September 17, Liverpool and Aston Villa will play their first games of the season against AC Milan and Young Boys in Switzerland, respectively.
On Thursday, September 19, Arsenal will play Atalanta to conclude the English team’s inaugural round of games. Manchester City will play Inter Milan again the day after.
After the first match, Xabi Alonso returns to Anfield in game week four with Bayer Leverkusen and then Real Madrid three weeks later, so Liverpool will be watching theirs through their fingers.
Given their upcoming matches against Slovan Bratislava, Sparta Prague, Sporting, Feyenoord, Juventus, PSG, and Club Brugge, Manchester City will be optimistic that they can advance to the next round in this new format. Arsenal is still after European glory, and their path to that goal begins this year with matches against Atalanta, PSG at home, and Inter with a stopover at Shakhtar Donetsk in between. In addition, they play Sporting and Girona; their other opponents are AS Monaco and Dinamo Zagreb.
Last but not least, Aston Villa has made a comeback to the top European competition. They will play away games against Club Brugge, RB Leipzig, and Monaco as part of a continental tour. Two important matches will take place at Villa Park on October 2 and November 27, respectively, against Juventus and Bayern Munich.
Europe’s premier club championship has changed formats for the first time in twenty-one years. Now that we have thirty-six teams, they will not be divided into groups. Alternatively, there is the Champions League “league phase.”
This is how it functions:
The 16 teams in positions 9 through 24 participate in the knockout phase of the playoffs in February to secure a spot in the round of 16, which is played in March. The teams in positions 25 through 36 are eliminated in January.
