Report: The new Champions League format that is set to favour Arsenal

A couple of days ago when the Football world was battling the Super League drama, UEFA announced a new format to the Champions League that will take effect from the 2024/2025 season.

The new format brings an additional four teams to the tournament. From the usual 32 teams, there will now be 36 teams to be involved in Europe’s top tier competition.

It also puts an end to the traditional group stage where the 32 teams are divided into 8 groups of 4 teams. There will now be a single league containing all 36 teams.

Teams will no longer play three opponents twice (home and away) but will instead play against 10 different teams, half of them at home and half of them away bringing in a prospect of some thrilling matches between big teams in the early stages.

How does this change benefit Arsenal?

Arsenal haven’t qualified for the Champions League since 2016. (Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

The good news for Arsenal is the newly added four slots available, two of which will go to clubs with the highest club coefficients that have not qualified automatically for the Champions League’s league stage, but have qualified either for the Champions League qualification phase or the Europa League/the Europa Conference League.

Arsenal are ranked 11th on the club coefficients table and currently the only side outside the top four among the top 11. This means Arsenal would be able to qualify for the Champions League even if they finished outside the top four as long as they finished the season within positions 5-8 in the Premier League.

So Arsenal’s long consistency in Europe will finally pay off but we hope by then of course we won’t be battling for European football qualification but instead challenging for the domestic title.