Our Guide to UEFA's New Format for European Competitions

Football is always changing, always evolving. The world’s most popular sport is also one of its most adaptable. This is particularly true in Europe, where tournaments have been refining and restructuring themselves for decades.

Under the old system, at the beginning of the major European tournaments - the Champions League, the Europa League, and the Europa Conference League - all the teams were broken up into eight groups of four. Now there is a single table with the teams descending in rank from top to bottom on the basis of points acquired. Instead of each team playing all three opponents in their group twice - once in front of their home crowd and once on foreign turf - there are now eight matches against eight different teams, half of them taking place at home and half away. 

What this means is that the field has been widened and levelled, so that there are more teams competing and that they are more consistently paired with opponents of similar calibre. The two teams facing each other at the end of the tournament might have already gone head-to-head, making it not only a final but a sequel. Each of the early matches will now be instilled with greater urgency and anticipation, since when you’re playing in a league, every goal matters. A mistake at the last minute might be the difference between the exhilaration of securing a spot in the next round and the despair of a silent coach journey away from the stadium.

The teams that finish in the top eight places in the league now automatically qualify for the Round of Sixteen; those that finish below twenty-five are eliminated. For the teams that fall in the middle, ranked between nine and twenty-four, the conclusion of the league phase triggers a two-legged, knockout stage. If a team defeats their opponent in the next two matches then they also proceed to the Round of Sixteen, and it’s business as usual from here on out. 

While evolution is not just inevitable but essential to modern sport, there are some things about the beautiful game that will never change. That tense feeling you get when the players first take the pitch, knowing that this could go either way, your nerves balanced on the edge of a knife. The roar that shakes a stadium when a goal is scored in the final moments of the match. The pride you feel when holding a shirt worn and signed by a personal hero.