New Champions League format: Getting to grips with the maths

After six years in the making, the new Champions League format comes into play this season. Champions Journal gets to grips with the maths and method behind the reboot of the beautiful game.

This article is from the latest issue of Champions Journal magazine, which is out now.

"We would have needed 1,000 balls!" Stéphane Anselmo, head of competitions strategic development, the department which supported the conception of the new Champions League format, is explaining why things won't be quite the same when teams gather in Monte Carlo on 29 August to learn their fate at the new league phase draw. With more matches, more teams and more permutations, more science will be needed to figure out who plays who, where and when.

The draw is the first landmark of each Champions League season; a ritual, a date circled in the calendar and not to be missed. There is something reassuringly old-school about the release of balls into a bowl, the swish as they are shuffled around, then the names being held up to the camera for all to see after being selected. That will still happen to an extent says Anselmo, but then the computer takes over.

"Step one of the draw is still physical; someone will still draw a ball from a bowl. However, we now have 36 teams who each need eight opponents drawn. We would have had to prepare balls for every possible eligible opponent – it would have taken far too long. So we will draw each team's name with a ball, and their opponents will then be randomly selected by the computer. The computer will calculate all future options simultaneously so that we never find ourselves at a deadlock."

It is a fitting introduction to this new world, our first point of contact with the new format before it all kicks off on 17 September. Together with the head of club competitions, Tobias Hedtstück, and many other colleagues, Anselmo has spent the past six years helping develop UEFA's new club competition structure and is now preparing for his brainchild to be released into the world. Working in conjunction with clubs, leagues and national associations, the key aims were to improve competitive balance and sporting interest and in the process increase the number of meaningful matches – matches with something at stake for both sides – throughout the competition.

UEFA's football division have put in thousands of hours to come up with the new format, using complex mathematical models and algorithms to develop and refine it along the way. The Champions League group stage has been replaced with one league of 36 teams – four more than the current 32 – and each side will now play eight matches (up from six) against eight different opponents to determine who qualifies for the knockout phase.

A mathematician was tasked with simulating the new format over three seasons, using modelling to see if there were better outcomes in terms of the number of dead matches, goal average, the goal difference on average per match, winning margins and so on.

"We focused our analysis and efforts on the group phase and thought about a different formula to make it more dynamic," explains Anselmo. "We're all football fans and we want to increase the quality of the competition for the fans. We use mathematics to simulate the competition from the first match to the end. We wanted to see if it would increase the number of matches between the top teams. Would this give the bottom teams more chances to get more points? We run quantitative analysis to improve the big picture. The maths gave us an illustration of how the competition would evolve."

The new format is also designed to open up the competition and offer chances to more teams to qualify for the knockout phase. "We simulated that qualification should be possible with an average of 7.6 points, which means two victories and two draws," Anselmo says. "In the new system, teams are seeded into 'pots' of similar-strength teams, so now everyone can dream of qualifying."

For Anselmo the fruits of UEFA's team labour will be evident early next year. "I'm looking forward to 29 January," he specifies. "It is the last match day of the league stage and all matches will kick off simultaneously. There will still be so much to be decided before the matches. Some teams will be fighting for qualification. Others will be battling to be in the top eight or for a better seeding position in the knockout phase."

"There will be so much at stake and I'll be sitting on my couch and following everything happening at the same time. I will know that a goal in Paris could eliminate a team in Liverpool, or a penalty in Istanbul may have an influence on the qualification of a team in Amsterdam. The whole of Europe will be connected on that night." For Anselmo, it’s a winning formula.