Series of rematches in new format for Champions League

MONACO (AP):

The Champions League will have a series of rematches of recent finals in the bigger slate of games paired yesterday in the new format of European football’s signature competition.

Real Madrid will have re-runs of their past three Champions League title wins, against Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, in a revamped eight-game schedule for each team, now the traditional group stage is abolished.

Madrid have added France superstar Kylian Mbappé to their stellar team since beating Dortmund in last season’s final. They also beat Liverpool in the 2022 and 2018 finals among their record 15 European titles.

Madrid will host Dortmund and travel to Liverpool, though the match dates will not be confirmed until Saturday.

Manchester City also get a Champions League final reunion – hosting Inter Milan, who beat them to win the European title in 2023.

Bayern Munich will host Paris Saint-Germain in a rematch of the 2020 final that the German giants won 1-0.

Defending champions Madrid’s slate of opponents also include home games against seven-time European champion AC Milan, Salzburg and Stuttgart, with trips to Atalanta – the Europa League winners that Madrid beat in the UEFA Super Cup this month – and twice to France, to play Lille and debutant Brest.

A complex draw ceremony in Monaco aided on stage by Cristiano Ronaldo gave eight-team slates of opponents for all 36 teams in the bigger and more lucrative Champions League, that has a prize money fund of at least 2.5 billion euros (US$2.8 billion).

The traditional 32-team group stage played each season since 2003 was scrapped in favour of a single-standings league. Now, 36 teams each will play eight games against eight different opponents through January.

The top eight in the standings in January go direct to the round of 16 in March. Teams ranked ninth to 24th go into the knockout play-offs in February. The bottom 12 teams are eliminated.

Man City’s away games at PSG and Juventus were balanced by one of the easier slates of home games: against Club Brugge, Feyenoord and Sparta Prague.

The English champions also must travel to Slovan Bratislava, one of the lowest-ranked teams, which meant avoiding Girona, their Spanish siblings in an Abu Dhabi-backed global network of clubs. Man City are the flagship club and their owners had to put their Girona shares into a blind trust to comply with UEFA integrity rules.

Bayern will also host Barcelona, who they routed 8-2 in the quarter-finals of the 2020 title run, and travel to Aston Villa, the surprise winners of their 1982 European Cup final.

Liverpool will host Bayer Leverkusen, the German champions, in a standout match of the expanded league phase.

Leverkusen will host city rivals Inter Milan and AC Milan, and also travel to Atlético Madrid.

The new-style draw was made at a gala ceremony in a beach-side concert hall in Monaco with soccer greats Ronaldo and Gianluigi Buffon.

After each team’s ball was picked by Buffon from one of four bowls – seeded according to results in the past five years of European club competitions – Ronaldo theatrically pressed a button for the reveal of how a software programme allocated two opponents from each of the four seeding pots.

The new format was created by UEFA under pressure from influential clubs who wanted more guaranteed games and a wider variety of high-profile opponents, believing the old group stage was predictable and lacked drama. The later knockout stages have typically involved only wealthy clubs from the richest domestic leagues.