Real Madrid winning the Champions League title also was a victory for Shakhtar Donetsk and defeat for Borussia Dortmund also was a loss for Eintracht Frankfurt.
Madrid’s 2-0 win Saturday in the final in London settled the
last direct entries into the revamped 36-team Champions League lineup for next
season.
UEFA retains an entry for the defending champion but Madrid
already secured its place by winning the Spanish league title a month ago.
That entry reverts to the domestic league winner in the
qualifying rounds that has the highest ranking based on results in UEFA
competitions over five seasons. That is Ukraine Premier League winner Shakhtar,
which gets the upgrade and the guaranteed share of Champions League prize money
worth tens of millions of euros (dollars).
Dortmund qualified for the Champions League as the
fifth-place team in the Bundesliga. Germany got a bonus fifth entry that UEFA
now awards to the two countries whose teams performed best across this season’s
European competitions. Italy got the other bonus place.
Had Dortmund beaten Madrid In the final, Germany would have
got another Champions League entry for its sixth-place Bundesliga team, which
was Eintracht.
Eintracht now enters the second-tier Europa League, which it
won in 2022.
The 29 direct qualifiers for the next Champions League are
now known and seven more places will be confirmed in the qualifying rounds that
finish in August.
The new intake includes competition debutants Girona of
Spain and Brest of France.
It also includes teams that last played decades ago when the
competition was still known as the European Cup.
Aston Villa was the defending European champion when losing
in the quarterfinals in 1983.
Bologna’s only European Cup appearance was a quick exit in
the preliminary round of the 1964-65 season.
All those teams with little or no recent track record in
European competitions will come out of the low-ranked seeding pot when the draw
is made Aug. 29 in Monaco.
UEFA scrapped the traditional group stage in favor of a new
league phase, under pressure in 2021 from the influential European Club
Association whose leaders wanted more games, and a wider ranger of opponents.
The new league phase guarantees each team eight games,
instead of six, and eight different opponents, instead of three.
UEFA agreed that format in principle three years ago when
the ECA was strongly influenced by Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona who had
secretly plotted a breakaway Super League to effectively wreck the Champions
League.
Despite the UEFA concessions, those clubs — joined by nine
others in Italy, Spain and England — still went ahead to launch a Super League
in April 2021 that collapsed within two days. A furious backlash from fans in
England and threats of legislation by the British government forced the six
English clubs to withdraw.
The four Champions League finals played since April 2021 all
were won by Super League clubs — Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester City — which
tried to break apart the premier European competition that is now 69 years old.
The seven remaining places in the next 36-team lineup will
go to five domestic champions who advance through qualifying rounds plus two
teams from a separate route for runners-up, third- or fourth-place teams from
high-ranking leagues.
Qualifiers could include Galatasaray, Lille, Red Star
Belgrade, Salzburg and Young Boys.
Prize money for the 38 teams will be shared from a UEFA fund
of about 2.44 billion euros ($2.65 billion) and the eventual champion should
earn at least 150 million euros ($163 million). Each team will be guaranteed
about 20 million euros ($21.7 million) even if it loses all eight games. AP
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