Usually I would post the groups after a CL draw, but with the format having been completely changed by UEFA, there is no point. That said, it is worth exploring the format a bit, and although I acknowledge that we football fans are generally conservative when it comes to the structure of tournament, I do find it a somewhat confusing structure.
I think simple is better, but perhaps the new structure may attract more interest? There will surely be more matches, more teams, and thus more money, surely what drives UEFA above any other consideration. But will there be better football? More drama? Better matches?
There are now 36 teams, and they will all have eight matches, four at home and four away, against randomly selected teams from four levels according to their rankings. Already sounds confusing, but the idea is that each team will face eight different sides, and then be ranked in a table that includes everyone (like a league table). The top eight teams will go directly into the last-16, while teams ranked 9 to 24 will play a knock-out phase to get the eight teams that will join the 1-8s in the last-16.
Teams ranked 25 to 32 will just go home.
The draw today was to see who each team would play for the first eight matches. The result is a huge table with the home and away opponents of each side, and there will surely be some interesting matches, such as Liverpool-Real Madrid, Manchester City-PSG and Barcelona-Bayern Munich, there are also matches that are bound not to attract much interest except for the involved teams, such as Brest-Sturm Graz, Girona-Bratislava or Young Boys-Crvena Zvedza.
The other part I have a hard time seeing is whether this will benefit the bigger or the smaller teams more. The smaller could have more chances by playing against other smaller sides, and then pulling surprises against the big teams, but at the same time the bigger teams could benefit from playing more matches against "smaller teams", getting their goals and points to progress in those matches.
No matter what, it appears that even more than before, the most exciting part will be the knock-out stages, and the initial part appears mostly to draw out the smaller teams.
Hope it works and that we get a good CL season, and a great final in Munich next year.
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