Future Champions League Knock-out Phase in the Chance to be Held One Game Only Again

DBasia.news – European football governing body UEFA through the president, Aleksander Ceferin, indicated that he would hold the knock-out phase of the Champions League with a one-leg format again in the future.

As a result of the corona virus pandemic which had postponed matches in Europe including European competitions, UEFA changed the rules in the Champions League knockout phase which was played at a neutral venue and played one match only instead of the usual home-away system.

This makes the match exciting. The reason is that the entire team plays all-out with a one-match format and doesn’t think about any home or away goals, plus without the opportunity to respond in the second leg if you lose in the first leg.

As a result, the discourse to continue using this format has begun to be discussed by UEFA for the future. Ceferin supports it, but cannot determine with certainty whether it will last forever in the future.

“We were forced to do it but in the end we saw that we found something new. So we will definitely think about it in the future,” Ceferin told Reuters.

“(Not) a lot of tactics. If it is one game, if one team scores the other must score as fast as possible. If it is a two-leg system there is still time to win the next game.”

“I have to say that this one-game system seems more attractive to me than another system with two-legged matches, but again it’s too early to say anything about that, let’s see.”

“Because the Champions League was interesting before – now (also) interesting, it’s a pretty nice experience if you have to think about changing something that’s worked out.”

“So it’s not pressure that something isn’t working and we have to change it, we don’t need to change anything, but we have some new ideas now.”

Ceferin also reminded that with this format, the participating teams could lose some money from television broadcasting rights due to a lack of quantity of matches.

“More interesting matches for sure but of course we also have to think about the fact that we have fewer matches and the announcer (can) say ‘You don’t have as many matches like before, it’s different’ so we have to discuss when this crazy situation (pandemic) ends,” explained Ceferin.