Breaking: Chelsea can still play Champions League football this season as UEFA makes new rules change

The Champions League will now go from 32 spots to 36 with the group stage of the competition being completely scrapped in favour of a new single league-style system.


Every club is now guaranteed four home matches and four away matches against eight different opponents, of which the choices are randomly selected as opposed to the usual six group stage games.

The clubs that finish within the top eight of the league will automatically qualify for the knockout stages while teams that place ninth to 24th in the league system will pay in a two-legged play-off final to determine whether they make it into the knockouts or not.

What league gets the additional places?

There are four additional places up for grabs using the new system.

One of the four places will go to the third-ranked club in the championship of the association in fifth position in the UEFA national association ranking while another is handed to a domestic champion by extending the number of clubs qualifying for the competition from four to five via the so-called 'Champions Path'.

The final two places will go to the associations with the best collective performance by their clubs in the previous season (total number of points obtained divided by the number of participating clubs). This means that in last season's competition, Liverpool and Atalanta would've qualified for finishing fifth in their respective domestic leagues based on the collective finishing places of English and Italian teams.

If the Premier League is given five Champions League places, will the Europa Conference League qualification spot go down to eighth?

If the domestic competitions that hand out Champions League places are won by clubs or the same club that finish in the top seven, yes. This means that there could be eight Premier League teams with European campaigns next season.

With more and more clubs gaining on the so-called 'Big Six' teams, additional places for European football qualification could be a reprieve for those that struggle to keep up with the competition.

Chelsea faced their worst ever Premier League season last year and while they're sure to bounce back under Mauricio Pochettino and his revitalised squad, the knowledge of extra places will bring comfort to fans.

Similarly to Liverpool last season, Tottenham would've also been handed a spot in the ECL due to them finishing in eighth and Manchester United winning the Carabao Cup and Manchester City winning the FA Cup.

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