Ranking matters: Does the new format select the best teams for the knockout phase in the UEFA Champions League?

Abstract

Starting in the 2024/25 season, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has fundamentally changed the format of its club competitions: the group stage has been replaced by a league phase played by 36 teams in an incomplete round robin format. This makes ranking the teams based on their results challenging because teams play against different sets of opponents, whose strengths vary. In this research note, we apply several well-known ranking methods for incomplete round robin tournaments to the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League league phase in order to check the robustness of the official ranking, as well as to call the attention of organizers to the non-trivial issue of ranking in these competitions. Our results show that it is doubtful whether the currently used point-based system provides the best ranking of the teams.